


Little Mental Polaroids

by MizDazey



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23864449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizDazey/pseuds/MizDazey
Summary: Snapshots in the life of JJ Maybank
Relationships: JJ & Kiara (Outer Banks)
Comments: 98
Kudos: 308





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The general hopeless state of the world at large coupled with essentially falling in love with a 16-year-old blonde Pogue = writing fan fiction about the most absurd teen drama/soap opera/treasure hunt/Scooby Doo-adjacent tv series that ever was or will be. #sorrynotsorry

He’s hot. He’s tired and he’s hot and he’s pretty hungry and he’s a little more pissed off than is necessarily good for him - the tennis players and boaters at the Island Club don’t love having their drinks cleared by a snarling busboy, and -shockingly- aren’t afraid to make their feelings about it known. He knows that he’s never been great at keeping his emotions from flashing on his face; he knows it down to his bones, because he’s been dropping his eyes to sternum-level around his father since he was old enough to make his own cheese toast, and to accidentally shatter three plates in the kitchen while doing it. 

He gets that he’s got to get better at keeping a placid-yet-eager-to-assist look on his face while interacting with these fucks in their stupid cotton-candy colored shorts; he’s only been a professional busboy for five weeks but has already had three “discussions about his demeanor” with the General Manager, Mr. Pierce, and of course today’s going to make it lucky number four. 

At least he gets to sit and do absolutely nothing in the blessedly-frigid air conditioning of Pierce’s office while Pierce makes ostentatious apologies to the mother-and-daughter duo that were the latest to bitch about his attitude. He gets it, he’s not an idiot - he’s heard some form of “wipe that face off your face before I do it for you, boy!” more times than he probably honestly could count. But today was just a little more, more, than usual; dinner the night before had been half of a shit tuna melt and breakfast this morning had been too risky and right now his stomach feels like it’s pressed tight against his spine, concave under his stupid little uniform vest. When you catch yourself seriously contemplating shoving the remains of a club sandwich in your mouth as you carry it to the kitchen to be trashed - well, that’s a low point. You try to smile pretty at the thirteen-year-old kid who refused to finish her sandwich because the lettuce was “slimy” and not think about the literal trash you’ve -fucking gratefully- scarfed down in the past. 

Guess you really are what you eat, he tells himself darkly, and isn’t that a fun shame spiral to ride out to its neat conclusion: that this island, for all of its beauty and history, cares not one whit for a scruffy, salt-spattered pogue fish like him, and that will never, ever change. 

Pierce’s office door swings open silently; JJ only realizes that he’s no longer alone in the office when he hears the scuff of shoes on the floor behind him. 

Completely -and infuriatingly- against his will, adrenaline surges through his body, raising his shoulders up around his ears and making the spit in his mouth dry up. It’s only Pierce - who routinely wears lavender button-ups and is five inches shorter than JJ - but poor situational awareness is a problem, and relaxing into his surroundings is worth a dope slap up the head, at best. "It’s called a dope slap ‘cause people gettin’ ‘em are dopes" zips up his spinal column, and he shakes his shoulders minutely, trying to buck off all vestiges of his father’s words of fucking wisdom. 

Pierce circles around his desk and comes to stand behind it, looking down at JJ, who feels himself straighten up in the heavy leather chair in front of it. They’ve done this dance three times now, and JJ knows his part by heart: listen respectfully, apologize at the first opportunity, and don’t bother to try to make excuses because not only is the customer always right, but she is so righteously, wrathfully right, that video evidence and ten witnesses wouldn’t be enough to change Pierce’s mind about what he thinks JJ did. 

Pierce steeples his fingers on the back of his desk chair and sighs expansively, and look, JJ knows, he really is trying to look like less of a fucking feral cat when he interacts with the members - it’s just maybe going a bit slower than anyone in this office would like. And, JJ also knows that he has a cocky little smirk-grin and nobody ever said he was adverse to a little flirting when continued employment is on the line; so if he deliberately licks his lips a couple of times before he apologizes, and tugs the collar of his shirt a bit to bare his throat, who’s going to tell? Not JJ, not the old dead sea captain with his blue coat in the portrait above Pierce’s desk, and certainly not Pierce himself - not when JJ was warned to avoid being alone with him by two waitresses and one concierge staffer, and when Pierce’s reputation for propositioning staff is not the only secret kept from the members. 

So, sue him. He’s done worse things than smile at an old pervert to ensure he could eat. 

********

After the relative shitshow of the lunch rush, the rest of his shift goes considerably better. He houses the staff meal and starts to feel way less like an irritable zombie upon the first bite of the shrimp boil, and Mama Ell sneaks him two jars of the fancy peanut butter these Kooks like on their toast, so that’s a welcome uptick in his future food situation. There’s going to be a staff party on the dunes when they finally shut the club down at midnight, and for the first time since he started working there, JJ makes the guest list cut. 

He’s a little…elated, that the waiters and busboys and food runners think his fifteen-year-old ass is cool enough to party with them, and normally he would cajole someone with a phone into letting him call Kie so she could tell Pope and John B. when and where, but today, for some reason, he just, doesn’t. Even in the privacy of his own head, he doesn’t have a good explanation for why not - just that, maybe, he doesn’t feel like being around them while still wearing Pierce’s lecherous stare like an old sunburn. 

So, he says yes to the party and yes to whatever alcohol the bartenders can scrounge and he doesn’t call Kie and he very deliberately does not think about why as he stacks glasses in the dishwasher for the rest of his shift. 

He’s cut in the middle of dinner -lowest man on the totem pole- and he has hours to kill before the party starts, and suddenly not all that much to fill them with. He doesn’t have his board and he probably doesn’t have enough gas in his bike to get home to get it and then go back and forth to the party, so he gives it up as a bad job and just bikes home. Plus, he’d be real idiot to get drunk at the party and forget about the two jars of peanut butter in his knapsack - better to hide them in his room while his dad is still at work. 

The yard is empty of his dad’s truck and the house looks quiet and still when he pulls in; when he was younger, sometimes it felt like the house radiated his dad’s energy and anger, broadcasting an upcoming ass-whipping to anyone tuned into the right frequency. Now, he knows that’s a fairy tale, like mermaids and trolls and the hope that his mother might someday, somehow, come back for him, but he still feels a shit-ton better walking into an empty house. 

He takes a quick shower and hangs up his stupid uniform - thankfully the housekeepers let him throw everything into the industrial washing machines every week, otherwise he would perpetually smell like woodsmoke and kitchen grease. He rolls the peanut butter up in an old towel, joining a bag of Kie’s carrot sticks and half a loaf of bread, and carefully stores it in the deepest recesses of his closet. His dad has never been one for unexpected room searches or anything like that - generally preferring his prisoners to come out of their own volition and face him - but Jesus, it’s better to be safe than sorry. He contemplates grabbing his wax and working on his board, and thinks a bit longer about mowing at least the front yard as a gesture of mollification, but then decides, fuck it. He’s tired and still full from lunch and it’s hot as fuck outside, and he’s going to a big boy party tonight - nap time sounds great. He vaguely remembers setting his old alarm clock before burrowing down in his bed and shutting his eyes. 

*******

When he wakes, it’s dark - way too dark. They live on an isolated spit of land, no where near any telephone poles or artificial lights. Still, he meant to get up just as the sun was setting and head out for the Island Club - but when he peers out his window, he can see that the moon has risen and is shining weakly over the water. There’s noise from the living room; the clatter of glasses and the thump of a bass line, and worst of all, multiple male voices talking over each other and the music, loud and strong and slurred. Fuck, he’s home, JJ realizes, and there is, just for a second, the outworn sting that this was something to be afraid of, rather than something to welcome. He knows that Pope and John B. aren’t afraid of the very fucking idea of their fathers; he knows most kids love that their dad is big and strong and tough - able to beat back anyone who would threaten their kid. It’s just not so fun when big and strong and tough is used to do quite literally the opposite. 

JJ knows, honestly, that he should just stay in his room. Skip the party, avoid walking through the living room and drawing any attention to himself. He has peanut butter and carrot sticks for dinner and he can piss out the window if he needs to. There’s an angry undercurrent in the voices in the living room; if he listens hard, he can pick out his dad’s deep rumbling voice, and thinks the other two are probably Rufus and Merle, who run the boat with his dad at the salvage yard. They’re clearly pissed about something, and it is a bad, bad idea to remind his father of his existence when he is drunk and angry and around like-minded men who all feel small and stupid every day at work on this wealthy fucking island. 

Normally, JJ’s father kicks his ass in private (if you count the cab of his truck, their front yard, and, on a couple of occasions when he was younger, the parking lot of the A & P as private), because, as he says, “family business stays in the family.” That’s just fucking fine with JJ - there is no one on earth he wants to hear his stupid little whimpers or how pathetic and useless his father thinks he is. And, now that he’s getting older - and isn’t a pair of stringy arms under a puffball of hair - it’s fewer proper ass whippings and more fist fights, though they aren’t exactly a weight class match. The fucking worst of it though, is that now, his dad basically demands participation - demands consent. When he was little, it was all a pinching grip just above his elbow and a heavy hand forcing him flat on to a table or the countertop, and pinning him there for a beating. He couldn’t escape - couldn’t move, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Now, he’s a little taller and stronger and wouldn’t just lay there and take it - so now, his dad asks him if he wants to get into it, tells him to stay on the ground when he’s slapped down, makes him complicit in his own ass kicking. 

It sucks, it really fucking sucks, and sometimes it feels like he will be trapped in this house forever, no bigger or older than he is right this second, still caught flat under the weight of his father’s hand. 

Anyway, he thinks, as the music in the living room changes from George Strait to something mournful by Conway Twitty, he survived the gauntlet of Pierce the pervert this morning and he has a big boy beach party with a bottle of rum specifically promised to him tonight, fuck this. He’s going to that party. 

It takes only a couple of minutes to pull on shorts and lace up his boots; he scrubs his hands through his hair and grins at his reflection in the window. For the twentieth time, he curses that his bedroom window is painted shut and is a ten-foot drop to a bunch of rocks, otherwise he would be Spiderman-ing his way down the front of the house right this second. But, no. Time to pull a Peter Parker and escape Dr. Oc’s lair unscathed. 

He smells the bleach-y scent of dirt cheap alcohol splashed onto their shit furniture the second he slides his door open, and all three men seated on the couches immediately lift their heads to stare at him. "Rufus and Merle for the win," he tells himself, nodding politely at their bleary faces. But he spares just one second for that veneer of false respect, before turning completely to look at his dad. 

His dad is sprawled on their couch, big boots propped on the coffee table, legs taking up more than half the space. He’s holding a heavy-looking glass filled with something dark brown, and there are a bunch of little nips and half-pint bottles piled at his feet. He looks good and drunk, and his mouth twists into a sneer as JJ faces him. 

“Well, look what the cat dragged in, boys,” his dad says, swirling a sip of his drink around in his mouth before swallowing noisily. “Where you off to, boy?” 

The answer is actually one that his dad will like, because if JJ’s coworkers like him they’ll help cover for him if things go to shit, so he doesn’t even have to lie. 

“There’s a party on the dunes in a couple hours,” he replies, “people from work.” 

Merle turns away and starts adding something to his own drink from a cloudy glass bottle, but Rufus and his dad both keep staring at him, eyes narrowed almost identically. They have not given him explicit permission to leave, but he starts edging towards the door, wanting to get momentum if the moment turns to shit. 

“There’s this hot waitress I’m meeting,” he tries, because confirmation of his heterosexuality is always helpful to a man who sometimes holds him by his “faggot hair” when he wants to really make sure he hits him square on the mouth. 

“Alright,” his dad allows, wiping a hand over the back of his mouth, and JJ relaxes, just a bit, and turns partially to grab a jacket from the pile of their crap on the chair by the front door. 

“There’s just one thing, boy,” he hears, and his heart suddenly feels like a fish caught in a net; shaking in a frenzy, trying to fight the unstoppable force lifting it out of the sea. He’s not sure if he should bolt or stay put - it isn’t clear if this is the beginning of some shit or simply a warning not to wake anybody up when he comes in. 

He turns, and fuck, that’s a bad look on his dad’s face, fuck, that’s his dad coming to his feet, fuck, it’s time to go now. He spins for the door and has it half open before a tanned hand with scarred knuckles slams it shut in front of him - not even his father, but fucking Rufus helping to trap him like a little mouse in a cage. Rufus grins down at him, beery breath hot on his face, and tugs him by the upper arm over to stand in front of his father. 

Up close, it becomes immediately clear that JJ was a fucking idiot for doing this - he should have stayed in his room with his peanut butter and his bed and the weak moonlight. His dad’s mouth is flat and mean and his hands are already twitching - never a good sign. He leans into JJ’s space and JJ keeps his eyes down, focused on his father’s hands, and very much not challenging the alpha dog in the living room. 

“I don’t like little shits who steal from me,” his dad slurs, and JJ shivers - he has stolen any number of things from his father, but he doesn’t yet know the script for this particular drama they’re about to stage, and that is agonizing. 

“I don’t…” he starts, then claps his teeth shut when his dad grabs a handful of his hair, and shakes him, just a little. 

“I had a near full bottle of tequila sitting on that table this morning, and now it’s up and gone. I keep you fed and give you a place to sleep, you little shit, and you fucking steal from me?” The rage reverberates up from his dad’s diaphragm and blankets the room, plastering the walls and shitty carpet any everything else in the blast radius. 

The bitch of it all, JJ realizes, up on his toes to keep his father from ripping too badly at his hair, is that he truly didn’t take any liquor. There was a bottle of tequila on the table when he left for work this morning, but it was desert-dry and clearly, his dad forgot he killed it. The problem is, facts don’t really matter all that much when Luke Maynard has one hand in your hair and the other curled in a fist at his side, radiating nothing but heat and hate. 

“Dad, you drank - I promise," is all he gets out before his dad’s mouth slams closed. Flat-lipped, he stares at JJ, before chuckling once, deep in the back of his throat. 

“So, that’s it,” he says, nodding at something only he can see. “That’s it, then. You telling me, I got a drinking problem?” He raises his eyebrows, parodying a question, but the rest of his face stays hard. “S’what your mother always bitched, that I had a drinking problem. S’that what you think, you little bitch?” 

It’s gone nuclear when his mother is brought into it, and JJ needs to cut bait and get the fuck out of there, right now. He pulls, just a little, against his father’s grip, which is a mistake, because the grip only tightens. 

Suddenly, he is dragged, barely on his feet, down over a chair, bent at the waist across the back of it, until his chin nearly touches the seat. The hard back of the chair digs painfully into his solar plexus and he has almost no leverage to move - he is ass up towards Merle and Rufus, and completely trapped. The hideous vulnerability of his position hits him hard in the gut, and he lets out a fucking pathetic little noise, his mouth squashed open against the chair seat. 

Of course, his father heard it. “That was a real little bitch squeal, wasn’t it, boy?” he asks almost playfully, scrubbing JJ’s chin against the seat as if he were nodding. 

“I’ll tell you what,” he continues, as if anything about this moment was normal rather than deeply, deeply disquieting. “I’ll let ya up, and I’ll let ya take off for that party…if you say to me, ‘that’s a real little bitch squeal I just made.’” 

JJ holds himself still for a three second count - giving the universe a beat to see if it might suddenly ripple, and let him wake up in John B’s house, or even his own bed - like this night was nothing more than a shitty dream. It does’t, of course - another fairy tale. 

But, he wants nothing more than to be up and away from this room and his dad and the ugliness of their twisted fucking relationship, so fuck it. This is nothing compared to a million other petty meannesses, like failing to stock the cabinets with anything that wasn’t deli meet and chips and making him pick which of his dad’s three belts he wanted to wear across his back - nothing compared to the offhand insults and all of the fucking reminders that he is not wanted, not cherished, not loved. And anyway, it was a little bitch squeal - JJ’s never had a problem telling the truth when it smacks him in the face. 

He takes a breath, and then another, and in the steadiest voice possible, he agrees. “Sorry, it was a little bitch squeal.” He waits, still face down, as his father’s fingers recede from his hair, and the heavy bulk of him moves away from the chair. He can hear his dad pouring something into his glass; JJ gives himself ten seconds to compose himself, and then he is up and off the chair, sprinting for the door, thinking nothing more than: get away. 

The door slams behind him as he stumbles for his bike, and normally that would be a tactical error but he knows his dad isn’t going to chase him - he already decisively proved his dominance over his son tonight, and he might lose face if he can’t keep up with JJ. Grit from the road spits up and stings his face as he revs the bike and guns it, and it’s okay to get tears in your eyes if you get dirt in them - the tears will just wash it out. Nature’s own way of regulating the body, and not on account of any pain in his arm or his head or the soft place behind his heart, not at all.


	2. Wanna Go See A Dead Body?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paint flakes in your hair mean different things to different people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a little bit Stand By Me, but if JJ is both Chris Chambers and Teddy Duchamp (respectively, River Phoenix and Corey Feldman) and Kie, John B. and Pope are all various shades of Gordie LaChance. Nobody is Vern. Sarah Cameron is maybe Kieffer Sutherland's pompadour.

The fact that they didn't absolutely run the fuck away when Lana Grubbs hit the wall hard enough to knock off paint flakes really enforces for JJ that no grown ass man has ever thrown John B. into a wall. Yes, clearly John B. has been popped in the face by a Kook, albeit a Kook named fucking Topper who was wearing board shorts that probably cost more than JJ's dad's truck. And yes, Topper shoved John B.'s face into the surf until John B. bucked underneath him, but it's still excruciatingly clear that John B. cannot imagine a world where someone might wrap their hands around his neck with legitimately lethal intent. 

When you hit a wall hard enough to knock off paint flakes - whoever threw you against it meant fucking business. They don't care if you hit the wall so hard that you can't catch your breath; they want it to hurt. They want you to feel like a pinball in a machine or a piece of kelp in a lick of seafoam - helpless and bruised and suffocating. 

He does not want to walk into that house - even though it was patently clear that the burly, bullying fucks had gotten in their boat and fucked off. Once inside, and having seen Lana, JJ realizes that he knew that face and that helpless protestation - he's literally begged teachers and a babysitter and once, Mrs. Rutledge, not to call the cops. Listening to Lana wail on the ground makes him want to rip his hair out; he has a number of red-tinged memories of carefully curling up next to his mother, little hands soft on her chest and stomach, after his father's rage had fizzled out. Seeing women crying in pain makes him both apoplectic and terribly fucking afraid; sometimes, it's like he almost doesn't want to grow up into a man, because he is so frightened of the possible inevitability that he might, someday, use his strength and size to flatten a woman against a wall. And worse, that he might not even realize he was fucking doing it. 

Sometimes, he looks at Kie's burnished cheeks and plummy mouth, sunlight glinting off the points of her incisors, and he tries to think about any situation where he would ever, ever raise a hand to her in anything but welcome. Even when he is at his worst, even when he feels like he might vibrate out of his skin if he doesn't fling his body against some immovable object, he truly cannot imagine turning any of that violence on someone smaller than him. If that makes him the bitch his father has always called him, so fucking be it. 

Anyway, he's had paint flakes in his hair before- had bits of his house literally fall down on top of his ears. It's both frightening in the moment, and also a sickening return to the mean. He knows what it means to confront a man, with a man's strength, and a man's rage, and a man's carelessness for the fragility of non-man bodies, and he does not fucking want to go into that that house. The fact that John B. - fucking oblivious saltwater cowboy that he is - takes the fuck off up the steps and charges inside, makes JJ's insides twist in jealousy. John B. just honestly doesn't know how much it hurts to get punched in the mouth, and JJ, hovering on the threshold of the Grubbs' house, wishes fiercely for a second that his best friend never truly learns that lesson. 

*********** 

Scooter Grubbs is dead and John B.'s dad is probably dead and the stupid fucking compass is not speaking to any of them from beyond Big John's (likely) watery grave. There's maybe a mystery here but they are not the fucking Scooby Doo gang; monsters don't get their masks ripped off at the end of a 25 minute episode and carted off to jail. Instead, they keep living in their sprawling beachfront mansions and their shitty yellow clapboard houses and every other place where men make others feel small to make themselves feel big. This is not a kid's movie with a friendly dog and a happy ending. He doesn't want to go see another dead body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weird little idea - struck my fancy. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed - love to hear what you think!


	3. Simply The Best (Better Than All The Rest)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 2:47 second video of Patrick singing to David at the open mic night. 
> 
> Alternatively, catching rich girl feelings with pouge-heart bait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JJ + Kiara = endgame

There’s something about Schitt’s Creek that really, really resonates with JJ. He can never decide if it’s the ridiculous emphasis the characters place on various words - he particularly gets a kick out of the mom calling her kids “bay-bay” when it’s patently clear she hasn’t mothered them since maybe before they popped out of her - but he really also likes the way Alexis says “Ew, David” so fucking often. Normally, she says it when she’s grossed out by him or irritated by him, and, he’ll never say this out loud, but it makes him kind of happy for this crazy former-Kook fictional fucking character, that even when people are furious with him, they still always call him by his name. 

JJ has been “boy” if he’s lucky and “you little shit” when it’s about to hit the fan to the one family member he has left for as long as he can remember, so it’s kind of nice to see that even amongst TV-familial dysfunction, they haven’t denigrated to appellations, instead of real names. Of course, that’s maybe just the fake-respect rich people need to playact to keep the pogues from revolting - more than once, he’s come around a corner at the Island Club, tray in hand, only to run into a drunk husband with an iron-band grip around his wife’s bony arm, while she presses a long-nailed hand to his chest, trying to keep him from causing a scene. 

There’s something honest about his father’s hatred for him, even if it makes his molars and his stomach ache; JJ really does look just like his mom, who ran the fuck out on them after she got her nose broken exactly one time more than she could take it. She left his father with a six-year-old he barely knew how to interact with, and a house he had no business running, and she left her perfume and her bathing suits and her books and her seashell collection, like all of the things she had gathered up to her were, in the end, nothing at all. 

They had a giant bonfire in the backyard shortly after his mother left - they burned her clothes and her seashells and the few photographs she’d ever let herself be in - sparks flying upward in the stifling summer air. His father helped JJ carefully toss the seashells into the oil drum bonfire, wrapping him in his broad arms, and warning him to stay away from the leaping flames. 

He slapped JJ across the mouth for the first time maybe three weeks later, when JJ kicked up a fuss about having burned eggs for breakfast, so JJ ate greyish eggs with teeth that tasted like copper, and was “Christ, shut up you little shit” for the first time that he could remember. 

Anyway, Kie was the one who had gotten him into Schitt’s Creek - at first he pretended to like it because she’d let him come over and climb up the exterior wall to her balcony on Thursday nights and sit in the wash of her sweet-smelling air-conditioned room for an hour or so to watch it- but as the characters stopped being such unrepentant douchebags and actually grew towards being a family again, he was fucking hooked, for real. 

So he and Kie made a tradition of getting high on his hydroponic stash and religiously watching each new episode, so thankfully he had some dank weed and a couple of stressful back to back double shifts for an excuse for legit crying like a little bitch when Patrick told David that he loved him, that David was his Mariah Carey. JJ knows that his mother told him that she loved him - he can remember it, in a sort of gauzy, wistful way - and he knows that his dad has said that he loves him, although he normally only ever says it after JJ scrounges up a six pack or the remainder of the mortgage payment. “Love you, you little shit” doesn’t sound like the way Patrick and David say it, or even the way the rest of the Rose family, dysfunctional idiots all around, say it to each other on that one episode where they danced around like lunatics, and it certainly doesn’t sound like the soft but well-worn way Kie’s mom says it to her on the regular, like it’s as easy as breathing. It sounds, honestly, like nothing JJ has ever really heard for real, at all. 

*********  
When Kie offers to come into his shitty house with him, to steal the keys to the Phantom from his actual psychopath father, like she would do it, guns blazing, like it’s fucking nothing to be afraid of, he can’t even begin to tell her why he would never allow it, not in a million years. But her offer sounds a whole lot like how he thinks “I love you” might sound, and he walks up the porch steps to face his father armored with the force of it.


	4. Reading Rainbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God bless educators who are only trying their best - sometimes little pogue-babies just slip through the cracks.

He’s idly digging the tip of his pen into the soft, pulpy wood underneath his desk when the killing-blow falls; their new long-term substitute teacher excitedly informs them that they’ll be starting a unit on Anne Frank. 

“And, because she was so close in age to all of you, and because her diary captures all of the voices of the folks in hiding with her, we’ll take it in turns to go around the room and read it aloud.” There’s a barely audible murmur as their 8th-grade class digests this; this is not necessarily a room of scholastic go-getters, and reading some book out loud is definitely going to cut into everyone’s time staring fixedly at the clock, or perfecting their desk wood art, like him. 

“Oh, come on,” she enjoins them, with a smile full of big, white Kook teeth, “it’ll be loads of fun, I promise!” 

It will not. He promises. 

“Fuck Mrs. Litchfield,” he thinks, “getting sick and having to take the rest of the year off, and fuck this new teacher, with her mess of brown hair and her big dumb smile and her stupid fucking ideas about what could possibly constitute fun.” 

JJ knows this new teacher is from some program that pairs up baby teachers with schools that have gone to shit - it’s some rescue program, like the food pantry, but for teachers. It’s kind of embarrassing to go to a school that has basically openly admitted that it sucks; and clearly, it has, otherwise Ms. Enthusiasm wouldn’t have been assigned to them. But, JJ’s waited in line at the food pantry for rice and beans and canned vegetables with his dad and easily half of the kids in this room, so really, it’s a little late to be embarrassed when the help you did ask for shows up with toothpaste commercial teeth and a can-do attitude. 

“Alright,” she continues, “Julie and Chris, will you both come grab a stack of these books and pass them out? Everyone take one, and write your name and your homeroom number on the front page, in case you misplace it.” 

He takes the book handed to him, with a glossy new cover with a black and white photo of a girl’s face one it, and briefly, considers “losing it” on the day he gets assigned to read. But fuck it, Ms. Let’s Read Out Loud! will probably pop another one out of her giant bag and hand it to him, grinning at her ingenuity. She’ll probably make him stand up in front of the class and read all the voices, and at the thought of that, of all the hot eyes of his classmates on him, as he tries to keep lines of letters straight, his hands start sweating so much he can barely keep gripping his book. 

Look, it’s not like he can’t read, okay? He’s not a fucking retarded baby, no matter what his dad and various first-grade and second-grade teachers might think. He can get through short paragraphs without too much trouble if he really sits still and thinks about, but sometimes the letters blur together from one line to the next or worse, he’ll get to the bottom of a page and have no real fucking clue how it connects to what he read at the top of it. 

John B. gets it - not, gets it, gets it, because his dad has piles of books and historical charts and shit and John B. has been raised to read that shit alongside his old man from diapers, basically. But he certainly gets staying under the radar and keeping one’s power dry, i.e., not letting Luke Maynard near any authority figure who might wonder about what sort of father doesn’t notice that his only kid is not just a dumb kid but maybe actually really stupid, for real. So, when he does decide to do his homework, John B. sometimes reads the long questions to him - he can understand them just fine when somebody else says them. There never anything they could do about the yearly Final Exam tests with their long and dense reading comprehension passages - last year, John B. couldn’t exactly read them to him over the cardboard barriers their 7th-grade teacher had put between each desk. In the end, JJ had just colored in the bubbles on his Scantron sheet to make a surfboard, and handed that in when the time was called. It won him a visit to the assistant principal and a telephone call to his father, but, surprise fucking surprise, his dad just laughed himself silly at JJ’s balls for doing it and artistic license and terrified insouciance about the whole thing, and told him to just do better next year or he’d be mopping toilets at the gas station for a living. 

Pope, though, is, a different story. Sometimes, it truly knocks JJ’s breath away, with how seriously, deeply smart Pope is - if he doesn’t know the answer to something, he’s probably read about it at some point, and can at least give it a shot. Pope actually likes school; and more than that, he likes extra freakin’ school - JJ knows Pope does complex algebra and calculus worksheets while the rest of them muddle through pre-algebra, and Pope always has some book tucked into the back pocket of his shorts. In fact, JJ surprised both himself and Ms. Litchfield with how well he did on their book talk earlier in the year - but he only did it by volunteering to drive Pope’s dad’s boat on grocery runs for two weeks, and teasing Pope into reading aloud to him as he navigated the waves. Even that, he has to steal. 

So, reading some new book from the olden days out loud in front of Ms. Rich Lady To The Rescue and Pope and John B. and the rest of the kids in his class - sounds like a super fun nightmare. 

In the end, it is Pope who saves him - after JJ gets super fucking high and sidles into Heyward’s when Pope is manning the register all alone late the next night, and tells him, looking anywhere other than Pope’s face, about what a real dumb fucking idiot baby he is - Pope realizes that JJ’s going to light his book or maybe Ms. Foreign Kook on fire before he voluntarily humiliates himself in front of the class, and neither of those is a good option. In pure Pope-practicality, because this is not a movie montage, he realizes that he can’t suddenly transform JJ into some genius who knows his gerunds from his elbows or what the fuck ever in the next two days, so a different plan of action is needed. 

“And, hey,” Pope tells him, deadly serious and without the barest hint of judgment or pity on his face, “once we’ve dealt with the current crisis, I’m going to do some research and we’re going to figure out how to help you, how to make this work, for real.” 

JJ feels a sliver of humiliation lance through his guts and then decides, “fuck it, it’s Pope.” Pope is the safest person in the world to hold this secret for him, and more importantly, Pope will truly, actually, to the best of his pretty fucking impressive abilities, try to fix it. 

In the end, with Pope’s coaching, JJ approaches Ms. Congeniality before school starts the next day, and feeds her a sob story: “poor little motherless pouge-baby from the Cut, had a horribly embarrassing public speaking incident in the 6th grade wherein he had to go to school in clothes that their new dog had accidentally peed on, because he didn’t have any clean ones, and it just so happened that he had to recite a little poem in front of the class that day, and everyone was very unkind to him about the motherless thing, and the dog-pee clothes thing, and he was just so traumatized by even the idea of public speaking, and could he maybe just be a good, attentive student-listener and forgo reading out loud, just this once?” 

JJ could see Ms. Government Cheese practically salivating as he “opened up” to her about his poor little struggles - she was probably already composing the self-congratulatory blog post about “Student J” and her compassionate yet understanding reaction to his trauma. 

Funnily enough, the story was even more than a little true - the motherless thing was more like 25% accurate, because to the best of his knowledge, he did still have a mother, she just couldn’t be fucked to actually live on OBX and you know, be his mother. The pee-clothes thing was closer to accurate than the mom-thing; but it wasn’t a dog, it was actually his dad, drunk and pissed and careless. 

And when JJ had woken up and realized his dad had pissed in the laundry hamper instead of the sink next to it, he had initially planned to throw the clothes in the washing machine and a pair of board shorts on himself and fuck off from school for a day of surfing. But, somehow, his dad heard the clunk of the laundry detergent and that plan all went to shit - he forced JJ into a pair of the piss-stained cargo shorts and drove him all the fuck of the way to school, one hand tight on JJ’s knee to keep him from bolting from the truck. (And wasn’t that it’s own few special moments of stomach-curdling humiliation - squirming in his father’s grip as his dad yanked groddy cargo shorts up his legs, dressing him like a fucking baby). Once at school, kids had not been kind about the clothes-piss-smell thing; that part of the story had been true. JJ had thrown himself into three fights that day and won two; John B. finished off the last one for him. (And, sitting on the bench with John B. in front of the principal’s office, waiting for their respective fathers to come pick them up for their suspension, JJ had been struck with the most incredible happiness that this boy, with his stupidly-long hair and his utter recklessness, had decided to be his best friend). 

Anyway, of course he doesn’t have to read Anne Frank out loud - in the end, a whole fuck ton other kids aren’t particularly aces at reading out loud, and it pretty much ends up being Pope and Ms. Captain [She Wishes] America trading parts back and forth while the rest of them listen. It’s actually a pretty fucking incredible story when you realize how brave she and her family were - it seems like it should be impossible to live a life when, at any second, monsters who would murder you just for existing might break into your home and hurt you. Or, maybe, he thinks, that’s just how some people have to live - and there’s just not much anyone can do about it. 

***********  
Pope spends their summer before high school researching diagnostic tests and reading Learn To Read For Adults primers. He tries a couple different strategies, and has to recalibrate a time or two, because initially he didn’t understand just how low JJ’s reading comprehension skills were. Finally, he figures out that the best way to help JJ is by making it physical - JJ learns best through body motion and repetition, so they practice phonemes and sight words while JJ chops wood or waxes his board - always keeping his body in motion. By the time they start 9th grade, no one’s ever going to accuse JJ of being Shakespeare, but he can, really and truly, read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I am just so MEAN to this sweet summer child - but I do think the next chapter will be more on the "comfort" side of the "hurt/comfort" dash. 
> 
> Also, where I grew up, we had yearly state degrees of reading power/comprehension tests. They were called, unsurprisingly, the DRPs. Five minutes of googling did not produce a NC equivalent although I am sure one exists - if anyone knows what it is, feel free to let me know, and I'll edit. It is, of course, extremely important to be accurate about the details of one's fan fiction about a tortured live action version of what is basically Scooby Doo.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed - love to hear what you think!


	5. You'd Need A Pretty Long Leash To Walk Your Pet T-Rex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JJ: "What about the DCS? Wasn’t that today?" 
> 
> John B.: "Nah, think about it, they’re not getting on a ferry. That’s god telling us to fish."

The beauty of living on an island that can only be accessed by ferry, which only runs at certain and specific times of day, is that “surprise” DCS inspections are never really a surprise. It’s way too much of a hassle and a resource-suck for JJ’s DCS caseworker of the month to make an unexpected trip out to OBX, only to find out that JJ and his dad have fucked off up the coast to fish, and won’t be back for a week. 

So, despite the fact that somebody apparently wrote it into law somewhere that DCS has to conduct surprise inspections of all of the kids on their collective radar, JJ normally gets a telephone call from whomever has been state-assigned to check up on his ass a couple days before they actually make their way out to the island. That way, he gets plenty of time to prepare. And sometimes, if it’s been a particularly bad stretch of days, that no amount of roughhousing or surfing accidents could explain, he and his dad do actually fuck off up the coast and don’t come back for a week. 

***************

JJ met his first DCS caseworker a couple of weeks after his 8th birthday. Her name was Katie and she smelled like lemons and she had really shiny hair. They sat at a little table in the Kildare Sherif’s Station that clearly had been dressed up for kids: there were lots of toys and puzzles and dolls, and the floor had big foamy tiles with letters and palm trees on them. It didn’t look anything like the police stations he’d seen on the Cops shows his dad watches, but he knows only bad guys have to go to police stations. So, not the best start to his afternoon. 

Katie breaks out a giant pack of crayons and some big white pieces of paper, and they draw together for a while. She draws a picture of her dog, Mr. Freckles, and he draws a picture of the dinosaur he’s planning to get one day. He’s going to call it Rexie and it will be so tall it won’t be able to live in the house with him and his dad, but will have to sleep outside in their backyard. He’s already scoped out the perfect place. 

Katie really likes his dinosaur drawing and asks if she can keep it. He’s a little disappointed - he’s never had such great crayons in his life, and it was a pretty good-looking picture of Rexie, but she seems like she really wants it, so tells her okay.

She rolls it up and puts it in her bag carefully, and that makes his teeth hurt a little, for no good reason. Then, she pulls out a new sheet of paper, and asks if he would draw pictures of his mom and dad. She’s still smiling at him, and her hair is still shiny, but he hesitates, because he’s not an idiot: he knows why Katie came all the way from the mainland to talk to him. 

Mrs. Alsace, the school nurse, had found the four long welts on his back during the scoliosis check that morning; he knows she did, because he heard her breathe funny and quickly pull her fingers back from his spine. He also knows that she told Mrs. Braeden, because Mrs. Braeden looked at him with sad eyes all morning and gave him a lollipop and a Twizzlers from the Superstars! bucket on her desk. He has never once in his life gotten to pick anything from the Superstars! bucket, and suddenly today he has two candies, and he definitely did not do anything Superstarish! to deserve them. 

The picture of his mom is easy - he draws a big boat driving away from OBX, and draws a little stick figure on the shore, staying behind. He gives the little person blond hair and draws a big green leash going off the page, for Rexie. He thinks it looks pretty good too - the boat looks like it’s leaping through the surf as it drives away. He hesitates just a little before starting a picture of his dad; he knows if he draws him with steam coming out of his ears like a cartoon, or worse, big and red-faced with angry black eyes, nothing good is going to come of that. Maybe they’ll take him away from his dad and keep in the in the police station forever. He knows full well they aren’t going to let Katie pop him in her bag and take him home with her to her lemon-smelling house and Mr. Freckles - that’s not how it works. 

So he picks up all the blues and greens and yellows he can find and he draws the ocean, and his dad and him on their surfboards in the middle of a calm patch, waiting for the next wave to ride. He draws his dad’s big arm out, ready to catch him if he slips, because that’s true, his dad always takes really good care of him in the water. And, to finish it off, he draws Rexie’s head and his little T-Rex arms paddling out after them. 

There’s a lot of adults that do a lot of talking with his dad after he meets with Katie. Lots of people with clipboards come out to their house and look in their cupboards and in his bedroom closet and make little notes. The pastor from the church his mom had taken him to a handful of times comes out; so does the Sherif. His dad has to go to these classes in the basement of the Town Hall on Tuesday nights for a while, and he tries cooking sloppy joes and hamburgers and once, they even do a full lobster boil, poured out on a couple of driftwood boards in the backyard. Best of all, his dad doesn’t hit him for almost until his next birthday - maybe a tap on the ass or a couple of slaps, but he doesn’t pull his belt off or dig his knuckles hard over JJ’s sternum. It was a belt that had made the marks that upset Mrs. Alsace and kicked off all the DCS stuff and other changes, and JJ lets himself hope that belts might be a thing of the past, like the stupid fairy tale idea that he might somehow ever get a pet dinosaur. 

He talks to Katie on the phone almost once a week for that whole year, except for the couple times she makes the journey by ferry out to talk to him in person. They don’t stay in the little kid jail at the Sherif’s station; instead, they walk along the beach and look for seashells and he makes her clap her hands and cheer, when shows her how far he can throw a rock. 

A couple weeks after his 9th birthday, he calls Katie’s number and gets a message from a robot phone lady, saying that it didn’t work any longer. A couple weeks later, he gets a telephone call from somebody named Mr. McAllister, who works with Mrs. Katie Bristow at DCS, and now Mr. McAllister was going to be his caseworker, wasn’t that nice. He could barely get the words out, but he did manage to ask where Katie had gone, and why she didn’t tell him that she was leaving. Mr. McAllister tells him that Katie’s husband, who was a soldier in the war in Afghanistan, had been hurt, and Katie left to go and be with him and take care of him. Mr. McAllister told him that he should pray for Mr. and Mrs. Bristow, wouldn’t that be a nice thing for him to do. 

JJ hangs up on Mr. McAllister and places the receiver carefully in its cradle. His lips feel like they are buzzing and his hands are suddenly freezing cold. He sees a ball peen hammer sticking out of his dad’s tool box on the table, and suddenly it feels like he has no other option: he snatches the hammer up and smashes the phone. Shards of plastic fly everywhere and the phone itself gives this sad electric burble, but he doesn’t stop until it lays in pieces, fully destroyed. But that isn’t enough - he smashes his arms over the table and crashes into the tool box, which goes flying. The drill bit box hits the floor and cracks open - it looks like a mini firework of tiny metal pieces. He hears something big and heavy crunch, and the clang of the tool box itself as it lands. It is an absolute fucking mess. 

He sits in his closet wrapped in an old sleeping bag until he hears his dad open the front door that night; he knows he’s going to get creamed for the shitshow he created - he fucking deserves it, honestly. He realizes he’s a little bit glad Katie isn’t going to call him in a week to ask about how he’s doing; how’s his dad; are they getting along okay? He would hate to have to lie to her. 

************

His DCS caseworkers after Katie uniformly recommend that he speak to the school guidance counselors. He likes Mrs. Loomis, because she turns on mediation music and turns the lights down and they both nap for 45 minutes, slumped in their chairs. 

He fucking hates Mr. Dawson, and so he steals items of increasing value from his office after each session, which ultimately culminates in a call home to his dad, which is never ideal. JJ attends his next session with Mr. Dawson with a deep gash just above his left eyebrow and a sore backside, and grimly refuses to answer any of Mr. Dawson’s cheerful questions about where he got the cut. They mutually agree to suspend their sessions after that - which means that JJ just stops going and Dawson never says boo to a fucking goose about it. 

But after Katie, everyone just seems like a pale imitation - even the ones that truly think there might be some small spark of worth inside of him. He gets that they’re overworked - there are kids who have it much worse out there than him. He can get by just fine. 

*************  
But sometimes, when he shows up with a swollen jaw or visible bone bruises, he can see his friends exchange worried eyebrow raises, and prepares himself for being approached by one or all with an offer to help. Kie offers her pool house or a chance to talk to her dad about maybe going to the police - both of those are non-starters, but for different reasons. Pope knows you can’t trust the police, of course, but there is only so much space in his house, and JJ is never sure from one day to the next whether Heyward could actually tolerate adding him to the dinner table. He always has a place at John B.’s - that just goes without saying. But, because John B. never needs to say that part, he sometimes takes it upon himself to explain to JJ why he should just leave his father’s house forever, how he doesn’t deserve any of this. 

“Sometimes, I think it’s like you want to be there,” he screams at JJ once, when having seen how badly it hurt JJ to breathe, tried to stop JJ from just packing his shit and heading back home once his ribs felt better. 

JJ has no idea how to explain it to them - even in the privacy of his head, he can barely articulate it. But really, see, his dad got suddenly saddled with an irritating little kid after his wife bailed on him, and Jesus Fucking Christ, it’s not like JJ’s ever made it easier on anyone, what with the stealing and the lying and the fucking up at school. JJ can mow a lawn pretty well and he’s not half bad at bringing the Island Club members their martinis, but that’s about the sum total of his marketable skills, so it really isn’t all that much of a stretch for his dad to call him worthless. And the hitting…yeah, he doesn’t love that part, but he knows his dad had it way worse. He’s seen the scars on his dad’s back from whatever Gramps used to beat him with - and sometimes, yeah, it hurts like a bitch sometimes, but it also can feel so fucking good, to be the origin and the endpoint of his dad’s attention, to know that in that moment, nothing else exists. So, it’s not like he wants to be there, exactly; it’s just that it’s his house and his body and ultimately, his choice, and no one else’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed - love to hear what you think!


	6. Musings On The Right Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pope is great but I am fully on board the Kie/JJ train. 
> 
> Alternatively, Kiara’s viewpoint of what happened after the hot tub scene

Pope’s dad is so, so bullshit at him; plus, the has the scholarship interview in like ten hours. So, as much as he clearly wants to stay and help her corral JJ - who has decided he is fully done with emotional shit for the evening and has resumed his post as captain of the hot tub- the whole fucking sacrifice that JJ made in taking the fall will be worth nothing if Pope trips at the finish line. So, she lets him help her disconnect the hoses from the tub and gather the floaties and pool toys littering the yard; when that’s done, she pulls him into a long, tight hug, before sending him home in his truck. 

The yard is quiet and still - the lights shining softly through the branches of the trees. She can hear the soft gurgle of the hot tub jets - they sound almost soothing, even though she was originally infuriated when she saw the unbelievable fruits of JJ’s surprising act of conspicuous consumption. But, on seeing the hideous bruises on his torso, his motivations became both obvious, and yet kind of horrifying: a big fuck you to common sense and a frightened attempt at a grand gesture to do something nice for his friends. 

The bruises sickened her; the aching vulnerability of her friend was even worse. She knows she needs to get him up and out of the hot tub - he can’t sleep there, or he’ll dehydrate and dry up like a prune. But, she needs like three seconds to corral her emotions, so to keep from saying anything before she has fully self-regulated, she starts pitching the floaties and palm trees JJ bought into the hot tub, one by one. JJ doesn’t even seem to notice, even as a palm tree skids across the surface and gently smacks into him; he stays slumped on the far side of the tub, not really appearing to focus on anything. 

Her shoulders and tank top are still damp from the skin of the boy who sobbed in her arms not ten minutes ago. As she had cradled him, she could feel how he twitched towards her, desperate for as much bodily comfort as he could get; yet he held himself back until she finally muscled their hips and stomachs flush together. He expects so little, and asks for even less, and isn’t that a fucking heartbreak? 

She wishes she could wrap him up in the 1200 thread count sheet in her bed, let him scrub the shit of the day off in the silent, gleaming tile of her cavernous bathroom. But he is in no condition to scale the exterior wall to her balcony to sneak into her room, and there is nothing on Earth that could bring her to walk him past her parents tonight. She is not going to give another father figure the opportunity to make him feel like shit today. “You hang out with trash, you get dirty,” her father has told her more than once in front of both John B. and JJ, and that is just not a lesson that needs to get reinforced today. 

So she leaves him slumped against the the hot tub and goes into John B.’s house to see what she’s got to work with. 

There are cleanish sheets in the cupboard of Big John’s bedroom, and she liberates them without a second thought - she’s pretty sure Big John would support the sheet-poach under the present circumstances. She makes up the pullout sofa bed in the living room with the new sheets and a pile of the softest pillows she can find. There’s a giant tub of arnica under the bathroom sink, so she grabs that and drops it and a cold pack from the freezer on a towel on the sofa bed. Finally, she fills up a glass with ice water and carries it outside. JJ doesn’t lift his head as she approaches - he honestly might be asleep. Normally, she would just dump the cold water on his exposed head and shoulders to wake him up, but today is not a day for harsh surprises. Instead, she dips her fingers into the cold water and lets a couple of drops roll down his collar bone onto his chest. He gasps, startled, and twists his torso upwards, almost as if he were chasing the sensation. A little curious, she does it to the other side, and he reacts the same way - making a breathy little sound of surprised pleasure. 

Well, fuck. 

She runs her cold hand across the back of his neck and up to his cheek to the edge of his mouth; he turns his head into her hand, almost mouthing at her wrist. Finally, she pulls off the aviators and he blinks sleepily up at her - for all the world a confused duckling aroused from slumber. 

It takes a couple of minutes of combined effort to navigate him up and out of the hot tub and on to solid ground, and a couple more minutes to encourage him to dry himself off. All the while he lists towards her like she is magnetic; when she finally turns to walk into the house, it feels like gravity is pulling him in her wake. 

Once inside, a dilemma quickly presents itself: she wants to get him horizontal on the sofa bed immediately so she can check his ribs and rub arnica on his bruises. But his shorts are still soaked and it’s clear he brought nothing with him but champagne and a whole mess of emotions. Not stymied for long, she riffles through John B.’s room for shorts, but of course the fucking child hasn’t done laundry for like nine months and there is nothing in his room that isn’t sandy or crusty or both. Big John comes through again - she finds a pair of cotton boxers in his dresser that will feel soft on JJ’s skin, and brings them into the living room. His face legitimately lights up when he sees her - like he maybe thought she had abandoned him to stand cold and hurting beside the bed. 

She hands him the boxers and he, normally very deliberate about not being naked around her, just tugs the string of his shorts. They fall to the floor with a wet sploch, which she hears rather than sees because she’s turned away, unwilling to let him accidentally expose himself to her, even if it took a little more force of will than she was expected. 

“Consent goes both ways, asshole, what kind of feminist are you,” she thinks to herself, and only turns around again when she hears him stretch out on the sofa bed. He’s curled around himself on the bed, head resting on one arm, and she doesn’t let herself hesitate, just slips into the space next to him. 

He’s staring at her from under his mop of hair - while she constantly flings her arm around his shoulders and unabashedly hugs him, the unwritten rules that govern no pogue-on-pogue macking always work out so that if they’re all sleeping somewhere, she gets a space to herself. But tonight, he’s clearly aching for body comfort and she wants to touch him with nothing but tenderness, as if that can maybe erase a little of the violence he saw today. 

She grabs the arnica and smears it on the bruises on his chest and stomach - the thin skin over his hard abs twitches under her fingers. She can see that he is watching her hand move - his lips parted just slightly. He coils tighter - almost as if he were curling around her hand. 

She can hear the cicadas outside - their sound amplified by the pounding quiet of the living room. It’s just on the edge of unbearable. 

“My mom told me, when I was little,” she says, suddenly desperate for something to break the silence between them, “that cicadas are making music - that their noise is a million of them playing little tiny violins.” 

He smiles dopily, clearly still pretty drunk, and rubs his first two fingers together. “Bug violins.” 

“Yeah, I think she was trying to get me to practice the violin more. But I was so worried about the bug violins. ‘Oh, but where do they put them if it rains? How do they all know what songs to play at night?’ It backfired.” 

She caps the arnica and pushes it under the pillow on her side of the bed. The fucking bruises are still horribly stark and hot to the touch on his torso, but now are covered in a layer of slick gel. She did that. It’s both a kindness and also, honestly, fucking not all that much at all. 

He looks more or less comfortable, so she draws the sheet up over them both. She hears his breath hitch a little, and then the dumb idiot starts to slide out of bed, as if he thinks he should go find somewhere else to sleep. 

“No, Jay,” she whispers, holding out her hands to him. “Stay here, with me. I want you to.” 

He gives a great shuddering sigh, and lowers himself back down to the bed. She curls towards him, and in an instant he pulls her into his arms, crushed tight against his chest. His face is in her hair and he’s taking in these deep pulls of air, nearly gasping. 

“Slow, slow breaths, Jay,” she murmurs, and after a minute he does stop panting so harshly, but doesn’t move his head. 

“It’s okay, JJ, we’re safe in John B.’s house - it’s just you and me.” 

“And the bug violins.” 

She laughs - what else can she do? 

She can feel his limbs getting heavier as he slips toward sleep, but even though he declared a moratorium on emotional shit, she’s the captain of this sofa bed, not him. 

“JJ,” she asks into the dark, “do you want to, to talk about it?” 

She feels him press his face tighter against her hair, but he otherwise doesn’t move. 

“Uh, nope,” he replies, popping the ‘p.’ “I, uh, don’t really want him, here, right now.” He shifts, burrowing deeper into the bed. “And, um, s’not really…it’s nothing that hasn’t happened, before.” 

She knows this, she fucking knows this - sometimes, when she sees him with bruises on his arms or his face, it feels like someone has lit a fire inside her body, and she has to stop herself from vomiting it out. The fucking resignation in his voice right now; it makes her eyes ache. She’s never told him this, but years ago, when she was first let in to the secret that was JJ’s shit with his dad, she begged her parents to let him come live with them. She promised that she would be a good little Kook - she would go to the Kook Academy and do perfectly in school and work at the Wreck and practice her violin - if they would just let him stay. Her father was the one who delivered the message, but she’s always known that it was her mother who decided against it. She knows that her mother took one look at JJ in his shitty cargos and bad haircut and dirty fingernails, and saw none of the wildness and humor and loyalty that blazed out from him -instead, she saw nothing but trash. 

And she knows, she really fucking knows, if she tells him that he doesn’t deserve to be treated like this - that he deserves better - he will roll out of the bed and go find someplace else to sleep. She’s heard John B. tell him that maybe a dozen times, and she’s seen how his face goes hard and cold when he hears it. Fuck, she’s said it to him before; she remembers that the last time she said this to him, he got so drunk he tried to climb up to the roof of the Chateau, because he wanted to ‘touch the moon.’ So, a different tactic was needed. 

“Okay, Jay,” she says. “Okay.” She hears him sigh in relief, and his arms tighten around her incrementally. 

“Hey, though, I fucking hate that it happened, but you got through it, you know? You’re here and, you bought us a fucking ridiculous hot tub, and he didn’t beat you. He didn’t win.” 

He’s still behind her, muscles tensed so tightly, so she runs her hands down his arms and threads her fingers through his, helping him keep her pulled against him. 

“You did the best thing, Jay, you really did. You did absolutely the best thing you could have.” 

He huffs a maybe-laugh against her hair and goes almost boneless, the weight of the day and the multiple bottles of champagne finally, finally taking him down to sleep. 

She doesn’t care that it’s frankly 5000 degrees in John B.’s house right now; she doesn’t care that she hasn’t showered in like two full days she’s only going to get sweatier pressed against the furnace that is JJ; she supremely does not care if JJ is going to get awkward or weird about this in the morning - there is nowhere on earth she’d rather sleep tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed - love to hear what you think!


	7. Pinchers of Peril

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe one shouldn't take inspiration from Data and Mikey and Bran and the Gang.
> 
> Alternatively, I cannot believe it took me until the 7th chapter of this thing to reference The Goonies, when it could not be more obvious that the creators of Outer Banks put up a Goonies vision board in the writer's room and said, "um, yes, do that, please, but make it 700% sexier, please and thank you."

It’s supposed to storm, and neither of them feels like doing much of anything. John B.’s dad lets them pop real popcorn on the stove whenever they want, and ever since he put up the satellite dish earlier this year, a lot of the cable movie channels come in pretty well on the Rutledge’s big tv. In other words, it’s a perfect day to stay inside and watch a movie. 

After multiple rounds of rock paper scissors, they finally agree to watch The Goonies - not that either of them hasn’t seen it like 25 times before. But it’s one of those movies you can watch almost as background noise; there is no need to emotionally invest yourself. The story is as familiar as breathing: a plucky band of kids have a nearly insurmountable obstacle to overcome, and instead of leaving it up to their parents or the proper authorities or anything, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Of course, in the case of The Goonies, that includes a fucking pirate treasure hunt, greasily-evil villains who don’t give two shits that they are shooting guns at fucking small children, and a complete and flagrant certainty that they are totally On Their Own. 

In other words, nobody, not their parents, not the police, not any normal adults exist in the world of The Goonies, otherwise half a dozen kids wouldn’t nearly drown themselves trying to find pirate treasure that honestly, some salvage team should have gotten to way before 1985. Look, JJ gets it - he understands that there is such a thing as suspension of disbelief. That’s how you can watch a movie about flying cars or wizards or toys that have come to life, and not break your brain trying to figure out the mechanics of all of it. But, the thing is, the Goonies clearly come from Kook families, even if they are losers - they have housekeepers and braces and piano lessons and attics full of literal treasures. Normal Kook parents don’t let their Kook kids out of their sight for multiple days on end; normal Kook parents don’t rely on their children to save them from a cartoon villain. Instead, they call their lawyers and their, like, tax people and say a couple things to a couple specific people, and poof: no more problem. Kooks don’t get their hands dirty. And that, in a film with a deformed pig-head monster and a pirate ship Walt Disney would have furiously masturbated to, is the fucking fake thing that drives JJ crazy about this movie. He just can never get over that hump of disbelief. 

But it’s easier to try to cram handfuls of popcorn down the front of John B.’s shirt than articulate that thought, so that’s how they spend the first five minutes of the movie - rolling around in a buttery pile. But the fight stops suddenly when John B. snaps to attention and watches Data zip-line across town into the dude from Rudy’s room; he turns to JJ with a worryingly maniacal look in his eyes and says: “Jesus, we need to build a zip line. Right now.” 

JJ could make any number of objections, but that would be super lame, because, god, yes, a zip line would be cool as fuck. They absolutely do need one. 

***********  
There’s no need for a discussion - they are going to build the zip line at JJ’s house. His dad has multiple outbuildings crammed with leftover pieces and parts, and there are two giant oak trees on the north side of the lot about 35 feet apart that will be the perfect zip line posts. They take John B.’s skiff through the marshes to his house, having packed a couple of canteens of water and some beef jerky in case they get hungry. There’s all sorts of shit at JJ’s house, but almost none of it is what you’d call edible. 

They also take these walkie talkies that John B. has recently become fucking obsessed with; his dad has the other headset on his research boat and always checks in with John B. every couple of hours. John B. pilots the skiff carefully through the choppy brackish water, but JJ still has to grab John B.’s knapsack on one particularly bad bounce, to keep it from toppling overboard. It feels pretty heavy as he wraps the strap around his leg to keep it in place, but that’s John B. for you - he tries so hard to be prepared for any situation they might face. Probably the worst thing that will happen to them today is a bunch of mosquito bites, but John B.’ll nevertheless want to make sure they’re covered in DEET and will try to make believe that he has malaria pills. It would be endearing if JJ wasn't stuck lugging the literal bag so often. 

They make landfall at the little dry dock and tie off the skiff; John B. slings his bag against the side of the house and they take off racing for the outbuildings. It takes only like 20 minutes or so to find a bunch of old wood that provides a bunch of sturdy white slats they can nail into the tree to serve as rungs, and only another five minutes to find heavy electrical wire which will be perfect for the zip line itself. 

They carry their haul up to the tree line and start hammering - passing the nails and the mallet back and forth as they slowly affix 15 slats up the side of the starting tree. The plan is to start high and end ten feet lower - that way, they won’t smash into the ending tree, but will be able to kick off and drop into the dirt. Data used a motor, which is cheating - they’re just going to rely on gravity. 

JJ is so absorbed in trying to figure out if he can turn an old set of bike handlebars (and, where the fuck did these come from, he’s never seen his father on a bike in his life) into the grip for the zip line, that he doesn’t realize that his dad’s truck has pulled into the side yard until he hears John B. call out, “hey Mr. Maybank.” 

JJ freezes for just a second - but they aren’t doing anything wrong that he can see. His dad likes John B. and more than that, apparently once had a thing for John B.’s mother, so John B. can get away with having a smart mouth where from JJ, it would be a sass mouth. They’re two very different things. 

Also, his dad likes when he plays around with his tools and stuff, with the very painful caveat that everything must be put back precisely where it’s supposed to be - it gives them something to talk about. He likes being able to show his dad that he fixed a motor or got something to work; his dad is always going on about how it takes a real man to build something, not like the soft-handed rich fucks who wouldn’t know a day’s work if it pissed on them. 

His dad walks up the slope of the yard towards them, and his face looks open and relaxed. JJ breathes a sigh of relief - the parental-calming influence of John Booker Rutledge strikes again. 

His dad laughs a little when he sees what they’ve done - it’s pretty obvious what they’re trying to build, and god knows, he and his brothers probably built something similar when they were rugrats running all over the South Side. He looks at the handlebar contraption in JJ’s hand and immediately shakes his head. “No, son, that’s not gonna work - you need somethin’ that’s gonna move smoother down the line. That’ll get caught up in itself.”

He looks down towards the outbuildings, and points to the nearest. “In that one, there, I think there’s a bunch of cylinders, so I think if…” before he trails off, staring at John B. who has picked up the final slat of wood for the starting tree. 

“Boy, where’d you get that wood?” His dad reaches out and runs his hand along the piece in John B.’s hand, then yanks it, pulling it up close to his face to study it. There’s a tone in his dad’s voice that makes JJ feels like he has a million ants under his skin - this might have been a major fuckup. 

“It was in the brown shed, just inside the door,” John B. replies, clearly unaffected by any ants. 

His father chews on that one for a second. “It was, was in the brown shed. Just by the door. Gotcha.” 

Any hint of kindness shears off his face. “Did anybody tell you that you could touch this, boy?” He shakes the piece of wood and then flings his arms out towards the tree. “You know what this fucking wood is from?” JJ doesn’t, but he’s very sure he is going to find out, and yes, this is a major fuckup. 

“It’s from cabinets what belonged to the Griffin place, by the old fort. She wanted me to refurbish them for her - said she heard I was the best on the island, and could make her old cabinets into something real special.” Suddenly, his father hurls the piece of wood away from him, just a couple of feet above John B.’s head. 

He rounds on JJ, and his face is tight and cold. “This was gonna be our winter money stash, boy. This is how I was gonna feed your sorry ass. But you couldn’t keep your thieving little hands off of it, could you.” He spits, a great haulck of yellowish shit that lands just by JJ’s feet. 

John B. has moved to stand beside him, and he can feel him shaking just a little. This is probably the first time John B.’s seen the Luke Maybank Volcano in all its pyrotechnic glory, JJ realizes dully. Well, everyone’s got to their cherry popped sometime. 

There is a muscle going in his father’s cheek, as if he has quite a bit more that he wants to say, but can’t get it past his throat. 

“C’mere, boy,” he finally manages, and nope, this is not great. This is very not great. JJ very much wants to stay put exactly where he is. On the spectrum of his father’s anger, they have blasted right past raging fury to calm disgust. Disgust is…bad. His dad is, methodical, when he’s calm like this. This is going to fucking suck. 

JJ feels like his feet are trapped in six inches of thick mud, but somehow, he drags himself forward. He can hear the hitch in John B.’s breath as he leaves his side, but JJ does not have a single brain cell to spare for his friend at this particular moment. 

The second JJ is within arm’s reach of his father, his father slaps him, twice on the left side of his face. His dad telegraphs the movements of his arms - deliberately gives him a second to dodge. JJ… does not. Any attempt to evade what is due and owning to him would not be well received. 

Quick as lightning, his dad snatches his wrist and twists it up behind his back, forcing him to bend at the waist or have it be ripped from his socket. In the same motion, his dad rips JJ’s t-shirt up to bunch at his back, and then yanks his shorts down to his knees, leaving him half-dressed in boxers and a rucked up shirt. JJ feels the rush of the evening wind on his bare back, and burns with humiliation - that his dad can manhandle him so easily, and that John B. is watching it all happen. 

JJ hears John B. make a noise of protest when his dad yanks his belt out of the loops of his pants - his dad pauses for a second, and shifts, looking over to where John B. is standing in the afternoon shadows. 

“Huh. I take it your daddy never took his belt to you, boy?” 

“No fucking way.” John B. is spitting mad - JJ can hear tears in his voice. “He would never, ever do that to me.” 

“Huh. Alright then.” JJ’s dad shifts his grip, pulling JJ a little farther out from his body - so he’ll have more room to swing, JJ knows. “Well, we do things differently in this family. John B., this here’s what happens to little shits who steal things what don’t belong to ‘em.” 

********

It’s not the worst beating JJ’s ever gotten, and that’s the best he can say about it. He hasn’t had one for a while, so he’s mostly bruise free, which isn't a bad start. He had a great afternoon with John B. and they were on the water and he got to drive the skiff for a bit and they had homemade popcorn and John B.’s mom had ruffled his hair and smiled her sunshine smile at him, so he thinks about all that - tries to wall himself off in the painless goodness of the day. He knows he’s going to cry eventually - you’ve got to break down at some point, to put an end to a disgust-punishment. 

It’s not the worst beating he’s ever gotten, but on the other hand, it kind of is: having John B. standing just a couple feet away, furious and helpless to stop it, watching him bent over and taking it… it’s fucking hateful. 

Someday, he thinks, as he heaves for breath, trying to force tears to the surface to try to end this horror show as quickly as possible, someday, he’s going to build a zip line to the fucking moon or maybe Disney World or maybe just a couple miles up the island to some nice Kook house where nobody worries about a winter money stash and dad’s belts stay firmly around their waists and when a band of plucky kids have giant, outsize, insurmountable problems, there are just normal, regular adults there, who do everything in their power to help them. 

Fuck the Goonies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stop that, JJ, Goonies never say die. 
> 
> Also, JJ is plagiarizing his opinions about suspension of disbelief in movies/The Goonies in particular from me.


	8. Tales of a First Grade Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just in time for Mother's Day - alternatively, first grade is hard enough without regular peanut butter and fluff sandwiches.

Honestly, JJ can’t remember a time when he wasn’t friends with John B. They didn’t meet until the first day of first grade, so, mathematically, there were whole years of his life when he didn’t know John B., but it feels like he’s always been right at JJ’s side, ready to take on the world with him. 

John B. was JJ’s first playdate that he actually wanted to go on - he doesn’t count spending a bunch of hours sitting in the shitty front yards of his dad’s buddies’ houses, while they got drunk on shit vodka inside. JJ itched to see John B.’s bedroom and meet his dog, Cherry Pie, and maybe John B.’s dad would take them out on his boat and John B. always, always had cookies in his lunch bag so maybe there might be some of those on offer. 

John B.’s mom worked as a concierge staffer at the Island Club, and oftentimes didn’t get home until past John B.’s bedtime - but John B. told JJ that she puh-spifically changed her shift, so she could pick them up after school and bring them to John B.’s house for their playdate. 

The fact that she did that - ‘cause everyone knows the day shift is way better than the overnight shift - sends a prickle of unease down the back of his neck. He isn’t sure how he feels about John B.’s mom messing up her whole schedule just for him, but when he tries to tell John B. that she really shouldn’t bother, it feels like the words get stuck in his rib cage. 

**********

Mothers are…hard, for JJ, right now. JJ had turned six on July 12th and his mom made him a cake and they had a party with big streamers and his dad and grandma and his Aunt Leenie and her kids and he laid on a bedsheet and they all stood around him and held the edges and threw him up in the air six time plus one for good luck - and it was like he was flying. 

And then there was a bad fight two nights later and it felt like all the doors were going to rattle off their hinges, that’s how loud his mom and dad were screaming. 

And after that it was the weekend and his dad didn’t have a shift and they went surfing at Smuggler’s Cove and he rode almost all the waves his dad said were safe for him and only got a little bit sunburned and when he got home, his mother’s car was gone and the front door was wide open. For the first couple of wild minutes, both he and his dad thought that she’d been kidnapped - they go blazing through the house, shouting her name. But then, JJ saw that the photos of Grandma Julia were missing from the front hall table, along with the silver hairbrush that his mom never let him touch, because it was an antique. And her clothes were gone from the closets and the cookbooks were gone from their pile in the kitchen and it slowly became clear that she didn’t get dragged out of the house, but rather, she left fully prepared, and on her own terms. 

Late that night, he found his dad in his bedroom, sitting in the dark at the foot of the bed. He’s got t shirt bunch up in his hands, and JJ could see, even in the pale moonlight, that it has rusty red stains on it. JJ knew it was the shirt she was wearing on the night of the door-rattling bad fight and his dad was holding it like it is infinitely precious. 

JJ must have made a noise, because his dad looked up and saw him hovering in the doorway. He hoeld out his arm to JJ, and JJ ran across the carpet, and burrowed against his dad’s side. Suddenly, he was very, very afraid. His dad’s hand batted gently at his head, and he pulled JJ almost into his lap. “’S just you and me now, bud,” he murmured, and goddamnit if that didn’t feel like a buoy in a frenzied ocean storm surge. 

**********

But more than two months have passed since then and mothers are still, hard, for JJ. But Mrs. R picks them up in a weird old van that makes JJ think of Scooby Doo and which John B. explains belonged to his dad’s brother and which has been in every state in the USA, ‘cept for Alaska and Hawaii and couple of the ones where Indians live. 

Mrs. R laughs when she hears that, and tells him, “c’mon Books, you know the states.” She has to give him a couple of clues, but he gets Idaho and Montana and then both of the Dakotas are easy. 

“Do you like doing state capitals, JJ?” she asks, catching his eye in the mirror. He’s dumbstruck for a second - not at all sure what she means. 

John B. is bouncing in his seat. “Like, Helena’s the capital of Montana, and Salem’s the capital of Oregon!” he crows, and she laughs again. 

“That’s right, Books - now, what’s the capital of Idaho?” John B.’s face furrows into a tiny little point as he concentrates. JJ feels his mouth hanging open, but he can’t seem to curl his tongue back up properly. How does John B. know about all of this? Who told him about states and cap’tals and more importantly, why did they do it? 

“Alright, bud, who says ‘I-dunn-oh’?” 

“Oh!” John B’s laugh is loud and bright. “Boise! ‘Cause boys say ‘I-dunn-oh!” 

Mrs. R swings into the front yard and glides to a stop, clapping her hands in delight. She yanks open the car door and helps them both jump down to the ground. She slings an arm around each of their shoulders and guides them up the steps to the front porch. For a second, her hand on his back feels like a icy shock; when she smiles down at him, like sunshine, warmth rushes down his spine. 

They have a perfect afternoon. She makes them peanut butter and fluff sandwiches and she has oatmeal raisin AND chocolate chip cookies for desert. She pulls a million sheets out and they make a multi-layered fort that takes up most of the downstairs. Cherry Pie is pretty much everything a kid could want in a stinky, drooly dog, and while he almost never gets to be on the furniture, Mrs. R says they can make an exception this one time, because they have such a special guest. It takes JJ a couple of seconds to work out that she means him, and not anybody else, and he feels himself go pink and shivery. 

As the sun sets, he feels himself dreading the moment when his dad’ll knock at the door to pick him up. He knows that his dad talked to Mrs. R on the phone last week so she could let him know where they lived and that she’d be there to watch them the whole time - his dad turned pink and got happy-drunk that night, and told stories about sailing in the marshes and climbing trees and crabbing with his brothers and their friends as a little kid. 

It’s fully dark when Mrs. R walks through the living room, carefully to sidestep the frankly impressive Lego structure they’ve created, heading towards the front door. 

“Hey, J-buddy,” she says as she walks by, “any idea if your dad might have been caught up at work tonight? He’s a little late.” He knows his eyes makes a worried face, because she leans down and ruffles his hair. “Not that me and Cherry Pie and Books aren’t thrilled to have you, bud, but if we’re going to turn this into a sleepover, I need to get ahold of your dad.” 

She opens the front door, and he can hear her take a deep breath and then let it out real, real slow. “Oh, well, there he is,” she says softly, but JJ hears her anyway. 

She turns back to them, and he can see that she’s thinking. “Books, baby, go grab a bag from the kitchen and fill it up with chocolate chip cookies for JJ and his dad, okay?” 

John B. leaps up and goes sprinting into the kitchen in his socks. 

Mrs. R. comes over and kneels down next to JJ - he’s come to his feet by now, unsure what he’s supposed to do. “Looks like your dad is out there in his truck, JJ. Guess we need to get our doorbell fixed, huh? He probably rang it a bunch but we didn’t hear it.” 

“Yeah, prob’ly,” he responds, knowing full well that the doorbell works just fine - one of the Rutledges' neighbors rang it earlier that afternoon, and Cherry Pie went nuts. 

She leans forward and wraps him in a hug - she smells like fresh grass and oranges and it feels so good. “You’re welcome here anytime, JJ. We’ll always be glad to see your face.” 

John B. comes roaring back into the living room, bag bulging with cookies, and there is a flurry of gathering up JJ’s sneakers and backpack and bag of cookies. Mrs. R opens the front door and a little bit of light spills out into the front yard; it looks like it stops just at the door of his dad’s truck. For just a second, he lets himself pretend that he doesn’t have to walk out the door and leave Mrs. R and John B. and Cherry Pie and fluff sandwiches whenever he wants them, and then he shifts his backpack up on his shoulders and walks out into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was shooting for some fluffy John B./JJ interaction but this went in a different direction on accident - one of the many things JJ loves about his friend.


	9. In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hurt is inevitable

The familiar scree-EEK of his father’s driver-side door snapped him out of sleep, and he blinked awake into a flood of sunlight. It was so hot in his room that the light almost looked liquid; like the syrupy, viscous cough medicine his mother used to give him during the winter whenever he got sick. Dust motes moved sluggishly across his field of vision - like they were trapped in the resin stickiness of the amber light. He could hear his father downstairs, big boots clomping on the wood floors as he unloaded groceries from the cabinets. His father was tunelessly whistling “Dixie” as he moved through the kitchen, and while nobody ever said JJ Maybank was a history genius or whatever, he was pretty sure the Confederacy stuff happened a whole bunch of years after whatever the 4th of July stood for, and anyway, “Dixie” seemed like, the opposite of unifying and celebratory. 

Heavy footsteps stopped suddenly in front of his door, and JJ snapped upright in bed. 

“Boy, get your butt up and help me with all this shit,” came through loud and clear, but there was only a fond command in his father’s voice, and no anger. That, generally, was the perfect spot to keep his temper-temperature, so JJ hustled on a t-shirt and rolled out of bed. The Maybank boys had a party to throw. 

His dad had, well, a thing, about the 4th of July. There’s certainly a patriotism angle, and God knows it’s a drinking holiday, so that’s two check marks in the “approve” column on just the ground floor; but his dad also liked fireworks and grilling out and having his people and their kids sit around a bonfire he carefully kept blazing all night. At this point, his dad had been throwing a 4th party longer than JJ had been alive, so here he was, caught up in his dad’s excitement - out of both necessity and maybe a pinch of genetics. (Nobody said JJ Maybank was some kind of history genius, but on the other hand, nobody said JJ Maybank didn’t very much enjoy blowing shit up). 

He found a whole bunch of leftover red white and blue napkins from the party last year, and wove them into this weird kind of braid thing that he duct-taped to the front door. It actually looked kind of cool - like the door had a crown made of America. His dad laughed when he saw it, and ruffled JJ’s hair, gently scruffing the back of his head. 

“Now, that looks alright, boy,” he said, and a pearl of warmth bloomed in JJ’s stomach, spreading like quicksilver through his veins. Sometimes, when they were surfing a big swell, or watching the Tar Heels or even, like, fixing a boat engine, it just felt so good, to be on a team with his dad. 

So JJ worked: He packed ice carefully around beers in the metal tubs set around the fire pit, and he ripped open packages of hot dogs and helped scour the grill with steel wool. His dad arranged the wood for the bonfire in the fire pit with precision, and lit it just as the first cars came bumping down the dirt road, as the sun set behind the trees. 

It was the same crew every year: Otis, Merle, Shawn, Trey and Jack-boy, plus their old ladies and their kids. Men who had once been kids together, running ragged and wild through the marshes of the Cut, who had grown up on OBX but never thought to leave it, even as they were consigned to scut work and shit jobs, where their choice of workplace perfume was either brine or motor oil. 

Jack-boy had been together with a woman named Jacqueline since as far back as JJ could remember, and they had a pair of little twin girls with piles of red hair and shitty teeth. Neither of them seemed to like each other very much - JJ privately wondered if they stayed together simply ‘cause they thought it was funny to be “Jack-boy and Jack-Lynn.” 

And, inevitably, there was Costa, Merle’s kid, who was about a year older than JJ but not any bigger. JJ could see him climbing down out of the cab of his father’s truck, taking the long way around the back of the car to avoid passing his dad, who called out to JJ’s own dad, roaring for a beer. 

Costa, with his dark hair buzzed tight to his head and a tinge of sunburn perpetually staining his pale skin, was, technically, JJ’s oldest friend. Now, John B. was of course his oldest best friend, but Costa was his first friend; they’d been playing together on blankets and in dirt patches while their respective fathers drank beers since before either of them could walk. And both knew that neither father would stand for any bitching about not wanting to see each other, so they were friends by default. But friends by default was still friends in JJ’s book, so he grinned as Costa approached him. 

“Happy 4th, ‘Banks,” Costa said, reaching out for a fist-bump. 

“Happy 4th, bud,” JJ echoed. “Let’s get into some shit.” 

*****

They waited until after the hot dogs and pulled pork and coleslaw had been served; after they all scarfed down pieces of the 4th of July cake Shawn’s wife had sent from her job at the Publix; after Jacqueline left to take the girls home to put them to bed, before they snuck away from the bonfire and out on to the boat dock. 

Silvery moonlight shone like careful fingers on the water, which was calm and still at this time of night. They each sat with their backs against a post, legs almost touching in the middle of the weather-beaten boards. 

“No fireworks this year, Jay?” Costa asked, and JJ shook his head, ruefully.

“Nah, Cos, my dad wants to go night-fishing for eels when y’all leave. Fireworks’ll scare ‘em into hiding.” 

Costa nodded, his lip caught between his teeth. 

“‘Member the fireworks, last year? How, uh, we lit them, from the bonfire?”

JJ did remember the fireworks from last year’s party. There had been a weird mood at the party - maybe because there were no woman or little kids that year, just the men and their boys. They had a whole mess of fireworks, and as the night wore on, they started trying to set the fucking things off by lighting the fuses in the bonfire itself. His dad did exactly one firework - the trick was to light it then immediately hurl it like a football, so it exploded harmlessly a hundred yards away. 

His dad did exactly one firework, and then he did a curious thing; he pulled JJ away from the bonfire and the men crowded frenetically around it, and he held him against his chest, one hand banded across JJ’s forehead to keep him there, by themselves at the edge of darkness. 

JJ swallowed. It sounded loud, like the splush-slap of a wave hitting an immovable object. “Yeah, I do.” 

He remembered his father lighting exactly one firework and then pulling him away; giving him the perfect vantage point to see Merle wrap Costa’s shaking hands around two fireworks, before shoving him towards the bonfire. The powder burns on Costa’s left hand had turned into fine, pale scars, and anyway it was too dark to see them now, so there was no need for JJ to look at them. 

“So,” Costa said, hunching forward and pulling a bunch of stuff from the pockets of his cargo shorts, “so, no fireworks, okay. How about this shit, instead?” 

He held out a bunch of tiny tubes, taped together, and it took JJ a full couple of seconds to realize what Costa was offering.

“Fuck, dude, are those M80s? How the fuck…” JJ trailed off.

“Merle, where’d you think? He got ‘em from some shady fuck a couple months ago. Wanted to lay ‘em out in the yard and make a backyard pool, redneck style. And you know who the fuck would’ve been running around to light ‘em.” 

“Jesus,” JJ said, staring at the knobby mass Costa still held out to him. “That’s gonna be, like, so fucking loud, holy shit.” 

“Yeah,” Costa responded, “real fucking loud. No eel night-fishing, you know?” 

And yeah, if they did this, it definitely meant no night-fishing, but it was more than that: if they did this, it meant there would be fear, and then anger, and then, furious rage, fueled by alcohol and inevitably, punishment. JJ knew that Costa shrank from his father whenever Merle turned to him; he flinched away in a way that JJ tried so, so hard not to do when his own father reached out for him, because if it came to that, there was no hope, then, 

So JJ thought about how nigh-fishing was fun, sometimes, but sometimes it sucked big time, if the fish weren’t biting or his father decided that JJ’s cast had made too much noise - the bitch of it was it was often fucking impossible to predict which version of his dad he would get on a given night. And more than that, he thinks about the burn scars on Costa’s hand that will never, ever get better - he was lying before - there’s certainly enough moonlight to see them. 

He looked up as Costa from under the fringe of his hair and grinned. “I mean, fuck Cos, it is the 4th. Let’s blow some shit up.”

Costa had a makeshift firework in another pocket and they stuffed the M80s inside. JJ supplied the matches from a pocket of his own shorts, having to detangle them from fishing twine so that he could open the book. 

In the end, it was the work of barely a minute to throw it up into the air and crack open the night. 

*******

Even with their fingers in their ears, it was earth-shatteringly loud; the waves of percussion seemed to ripple over them. JJ can hear screams from the bonfire; abruptly, the music cuts off, as someone probably bumped into the speakers and knocked them over. There is a flat stillness for just a split second, followed by a great WHOOSHING clash of glass shattering. 

“Oh, fuck….” Costa whispered. “Did it hit your house?”

JJ froze, staring at the roof, frantically searching for flames or holes or wreckage, and then it was like something sparked them both to life, and they leapt away from the boat dock and sprinted towards the bonfire. 

There were a couple of shadowy figures standing at the edge of the light as they skidded up, and it was Jack-boy who grabbed each of their faces, looking for signs of injuries or blood.

“Jesus, oh my Jesus,” he kept muttering as he turned their faces this way and that, “you little idiots done scared us to death.” 

“FUCK, you little fucking shit!” A new voice bawled from the darkness of the driveway, and JJ, standing shoulder to shoulder with Costa, felt him seize up. 

“You fucking little piss stain shithead!” Merle screamed, closer suddenly, and now JJ could see him clearly, stalking towards them, both hands curled into fists.

Costa wasn’t moving - JJ wasn’t sure he was breathing. 

“My fucking TRUCK, fuck you, little fuck,” and it was like he wasn’t capable of complete sentences, just pulses of hot rage. Merle reached them, and he grabbed Costa by the bicep, yanking him down towards the ground before beginning to drag him towards the driveway, so that Costa had to run after his father in a crouch, face pushed towards the dirt. 

Suddenly, JJ’s father was at his shoulder, and JJ felt his whole body jerk in reflexive fear. But, maybe it was a 4th of July miracle: his father wasn’t vibrating with rage and his body language was pretty closed off, but anything less than boiling was a good sign at this point.

“Were you with him, on that?” his father asked, jerking his chin up towards the driveway, where JJ can make out two figures, one looming over the other, who was hunched on the ground on his hands and knees. 

For a split second he thought about selling Costa out - the night might still be salvageable with his dad, and Costa had been the one to bring a million fucking M80s and a firework; all JJ did was supply the matches. But it’s only a split second. 

“Yeah, dad,” he replied, forcing his mouth into a smirk, that he knows will piss his father off. “It’s the 4th. Can’t have a party without fireworks.” 

*****

Costa is pressed up against the grille of Merle’s truck when JJ and his dad arrive on the scene - his chin resting on the hood, so he can stare at the still smoking M80 contraption which has smashed the front windshield and come to rest inside the cab of the truck. Merle has ripped Costa’s tank top up to his neck and has wrapped one hand on it like its a collar, to hold Costa in place as he whips the shit out of him. 

JJ’s dad shoves JJ down over the hood as well - his body lands inches from Costa, and he can see how Costa is panting, open mouthed, can see how he flinches forward with each blow. It is so grotesquely intimate to see Costa like this, and JJ can shut his eyes but he can’t stopper up his ears, which are echoing with Merle’s spitting, caustic rage. 

Wounds cauterized by hateful, humiliating words are the worst kind, and while Merle’s vocabulary might be a bit bigger than his father’s, JJ’s no stranger to the litany. All it means, in the end, is that you are worthless, useless, little. You are mine to control and mine to punish and mine to inevitably hurt, should I so desire it. 

The first stinging blow from his father’s belt is a surprise only because JJ has his eyes closed: hurt is inevitable. 

******

When he’s done, Merle makes Costa clean up windshield glass pieces by hand and throw them in a bucket; mercifully, after a couple of minutes, he gets bored, and walks into the house, clearly in search of a drink. 

JJ slips over to Costa, crouching in the ground by the truck, and extends his hand to pull him to his feet. He knows his friend is hurting - JJ’d seen a mess of black and green and violet bruises on Costa’s back before Merle even took the first swing, and Merle’d given Costa a $750 dollar beating, ‘cause that’s how much it will cost to replace the windshield. JJ knows there’s some Oxy in the house in his dad’s stash, but he’d get a $750 beating of his own if he tried to pinch that. So, he has the next best thing: the last couple of beers from the metal coolers, still semi-cold. There’s no way they’re going into the house now, and JJ has no desire to walk any more than a couple of steps, so he heads down the length of Merle’s truck and hoists himself into the truck bed, settling carefully on his stomach. After a moment, the bed dips as Costa joins him, and both stay carefully on their bellies, up on their elbows as they crack their beers. 

There’s still music playing inside the house, but it’s that loud old-fashioned 4th of July stuff, with lots of instruments and no words. In another half an hour, it’ll likely be safe for them to sneak into the house and crash in JJ’s room. 

He knocks his shoulder into Costa’s, very carefully. “You can bunk in with me, Cos - I don’t think anyone’s going anywhere tonight.”

Costa is very still next to him; because they’re positioned side by side, JJ can’t exactly see Costa’s face.

“Y’know, I sleep out here, sometimes,” he says softly, tapping the grooves of the truck bed with the bottom of his beer bottle. 

“When shit’s too hot in the house, with Merle…” he trails off, taking a long sip. “Or sometimes, when Merle says, when he says I’m not allowed to sleep in the house, ‘cause that’s for people.”

JJ feels, suddenly, like somebody has suspended him over a terrifying pit - that only the slenderest of cords buried in his spinal column is keeping him afloat above roiling water and deadly rocks. 

He doesn’t know what to say - he doesn’t know if there are words in English or any other language on this giant fucking rock that would be the right response to that. 

“So,” Costa finishes, “if he finds me in your bed, if he don’t kill me first for being a cocksucker, I’ll probably just be in line for another one of these.” He lifts his shoulder the barest inch, before lifting the bottle to his lips and draining it. 

They may be friends by default, but they are also friends. So, JJ crosses his arms in front of him and drops his head onto them. 

“We’re gonna get eaten alive, Cos, sleeping out here,” he says, and deliberately shuts his eyes. He feels Costa rigid next to him, and then, very slowly, feels Costa lower himself to pillow his head on his own arms, both of them pressed together at their elbows and shoulders. 

“Fuck ‘em,” JJ whispers under his breath, and he hears Cos exhale a tiny little laugh. 

And isn’t that just it: Fuck mosquitos and fuck illegal fireworks and fuck methheads who sell illegal fireworks to shitheads who shouldn’t be allowed to operate a set of safety scissors let alone pyrotechnics and doubly fuck dads who sometimes tell their kids they aren’t people. 

Because, inevitably, the question remains: how bad is your wanting? Does it hurt, when you want? May I tell you a secret? Wanting always hurts. Now you know something you didn’t before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last line lifted directly from https://the-toast.net/2015/11/02/childrens-stories-made-horrific-curious-george/
> 
> Can’t recommend the above-referenced story enough: 
> 
> He was fascinated.  
> Then the man went away. (Men could do that. Monkeys couldn’t.)  
> George was curious. (He was not so Good that there was not still room for George too. This is dangerous. Better to be all Good, and no George.)  
> He wanted to telephone, too.  
> One, two, three, four,  
> five, six, seven.  
> DING-A-LING-A-LING!  
> GEORGE HAD TELEPHONED  
> THE FIRE STATION!  
> There was an emergency.  
> George was an emergency.  
> Are you an emergency?  
> Who can you tell about it?
> 
> The firemen rushed to the telephone.  
> “Hello! Hello!” they said.  
> But there was no answer. George was curious enough to dial, but not curious enough to speak. That was too much like drowning.  
> Then they looked for the signal  
> on the big map that showed  
> where the telephone call had come from.  
> They didn’t know it was George.  
> They thought it was a real emergency.  
> Maybe they would see the emergency when they saw George.  
> What do you call an emergency that looks just fine?


	10. Bill of Sale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike Carreira is not a trash taxidermist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The world is on fire, literally and figuratively, so have some angst. 
> 
> This is rougher than normal, even for my brand of h/c, so I have put spoilers/content warnings in the notes at the bottom. Please scroll down and read them if you think it might be necessary.

John B. was blazed to absolute shit when he told JJ what Mike Carreira had said to Kiara when they bailed him out of lockup after that unfortunate thing with the fat lighthouse keeper and the compass: “you hang out with trash, you get dirty.”

“Didn’t even, didn’t say it to me,” he slurred, pupils so dilated his eyes looked black in the weak moonlight. “Like, couldn’t even call me trash, to my, like my face. Just said it to her, like, before. Like’s he’s called us trash before.” He leaned back against the rough-hewn post, and dropped his feet over the edge of the dock.

JJ leaned up from his own post, plucked the joint from John B.’s slack fingers, and took a hit. _Did_ stop him from accidentally ashing the joint; _didn’t_ point out that Kie’s dad hadn’t actually called _JJ_ trash.

But it’s not like JJ needs Mike-fucking-Carreira with his $115,000 truck and his house with a literal movie theater in it to help JJ realize that he is, in fact, trash. The bitch of it is, Kie’s dad is so far removed from life on the Cut that doesn’t really get that there are rigid stratifications, even amongst the trash.

Like, setting aside the fact that Pope is just naturally the smartest sixteen-year-old in the world, his dad runs a grocery store that delivers to half of the island, and his mom’s the assistant director of housekeeping at the Breakaways Hotel. There’s a bunch of food and cooking magazines laying around their house and they always have money for whatever books Pope wanted to read that week. Pope goes to the dentist as regularly as they can afford it, and DCF workers never showed up at Heyward’s Store because they forgot to send Pope to 3rd grade for the first seven weeks of the year.

And, like, Big John is definitely a teeny bit less with it than Pope’s parents when it comes to making sure John B. ate dinners that hit all rungs on the food pyramid, or, like, applied sunscreen, ever, but there was always soup or ramen in the cabinets and the stove worked like 90% of the time. Whenever JJ slept over, Big John would pull out these books with beautiful illustrations and would tell them stories about battles between old-timey sailors and soldiers and sometimes pirates. He would make his voice sound different when he read about lady pirates or mean old admirals, and he sometimes would BOOM! like a canon blast which always made them crack up. Lying in a sleeping bag on John B.’s floor, looking up at John B. curled against his dad’s arm as he read to them, JJ was pretty sure this wasn’t happening just for his benefit - just to trick him into thinking Big John was a good dad - the way his dad would never even raise his voice to him if Grandma Maybank was in earshot. He was pretty sure that this private bedtime ritual, which he had somehow stumbled into, happened nightly, regardless if Big John was tired or otherwise pissed at John B. for some stupid daytime antics. They called his house the Chateau, for fuck’s sake, which was the name for a ‘castle’ in French. So whatever Kie’s dad thinks, there’s trash, and then there’s _trash_.

******

Pope has been inside JJ’s house exactly three times in almost five years of friendship - due to a combination of forbidding edicts from Pope’s parents, and JJ’s unrelenting fear that his dad will take one look at Pope and run his racist-ass mouth. John B.’s been there way more times (again, due to a distinct difference in the Heyward v. Routlege school of keeping an eye on your kid) but although JJ’s dad definitely likes John B., they always try to time it so his dad’s off on a run or doing salvage somewhere on the island.

Kiara on the other hand has been inside his house exactly zero times, and it is 100% going to stay that way. There is no universe in which organizing a meeting between Kiara Carreira, self-appointed warrior for the underdogs, and Luke Maybank, small-time dealer and big-time dickhead, would result in anything less than Kie going apeshit on his dad. He has done everything in his fucking power to keep Kiara out of and away and frankly, totally ignorant, of goings’ on in the Maybank house, and she wouldn’t let half of the shit his dad says to him on his best day fly, without sticking her adorable little nose in. And JJ knows, and is fucking thrilled about it, that that’s because no one has ever slapped Kiara across the mouth. She’s fearless about running her mouth and confronting all challengers because no one has ever held her by the bicep and deliberately backhanded her across the mouth until she was spitting blood and the only thing keeping her on her feet was the callused hand wrapped tight around her arm.

The best days with his mom were when she was tired and sleepy and they would curl up together on their ratty couch and watch movies - she loved girly shit, and especially loved Julia Roberts. He’s seen Pretty Woman probably 20 times, and there’s a bit in it, just after George from Seinfeld has cracked Julia Roberts across the face, where she says, “Jesus, how do all guys know just how to hit a woman? What, do they take you aside in high school and show you how? POW! And a crack across the face just under your eye, and it feels like your face exploded.”

And it’s funny, because JJ could certainly fucking relate to the sentiment, and it’s not like Big John never cracked his hand off the top of John B.’s head when he was being disrespectful, and he knows full well that Pope got spanked when he was a kid, but nobody has never, ever hit Kiara, and that is why she will never, ever step inside his house. Nobody’s calling his fucking house a castle in France.

******

So, Mike fucking Carreira wasn’t enough of a trash taxidermist to know all the grimy nuances between their trash-classifications, but his general thesis wasn’t wrong: his daughter’s Pogue friends were trash.

And it really grinds JJ’s fucking gears that it had to Mike Carreira swooping in to reluctantly rescue John B. from fucking jail - because John B. had neither the financial nor the parental wherewithal to take care of himself. Because, see, Kiara’s never been inside JJ’s house, but her father is a different story.

******

Kie has her 13th birthday at the Arthur Bagley Turtle Rescue Center and told everyone that she didn’t want any presents - just for them to give some money to the turtles. They go on a tour of the Center and visit the vet clinic where they take care of injured turtles, and it is fucking magnificent, to be in the air-conditioning of this purely-Kook place, rather than doing anything else in the blazing August sun. JJ would have shoveled turtle poop to get to stay there, so listening to some nerd tell them facts about turtles was a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon. There are picnic tables and grills on the Center property, and after the tour, the Carreiras’ and Kie’s aunt and cousins grill oysters and chicken thighs and corn and there are four different flavors of lemonade. JJ hunches over his plate at the picnic table, Kie squished almost fully against his side, and they trade off who could slurp out the oysters in increasingly disgusting ways.

When he goes up to get a second plate from Kie’s mom, he has to stop for a second and scratch violently at his head - it had been itching like a bitch for the past couple of days. Kie’s mom notices him doing it - and he’ll never forget this - but she pulls the gloves she’d been using for grilling back onto her hands, before she pulls him away from the party, and asks if she could check his head.

At least they were sort of behind a tree - but she doesn't keep her voice down, upon rearing back from him. “Fuck, JJ, you’re crawling with lice.” It was that word, “ _crawling_ ,” that suddenly made him able to feel it - like a thousand tiny pinprick feet whooshing all over his body. He’s spent whole days covered in sweat and engine grease; he’s worn the same pair of boxers for days in a row; one time, his father made him go to school in piss-stained shorts, but he’d never felt dirtier than standing in front of Kie’s mom, _crawling_.

She leaves him tucked behind the tree and she speed-walks over to her husband, who comes over in seconds, his face a furious scowl. “Fuck, he’s been sitting next to Kie this whole time,” Mr. Carreira whispers, and his wife looks like she’s about to cry. “And how many kids from Ingleside Prep are here, Jesus.”

Mr. Carreira looks down at him, fucking disgusted, and motions for JJ to walk in front of him towards the parking lot. “I’m taking you home, son, you need to treat this right now.” Unspoken was “and you can’t fucking stay here and get your _crawling_ all over my daughter.”

When they reach Mr. Carreira’s truck he hesitates before pulling open JJ’s door, and if it hadn’t been more than 20 miles and two bridges back to his house, JJ honestly would have turned around and taken his chances hitching. At least whoever picked him up wouldn’t hesitate to let him in so he didn’t get his _crawling_ on their car seats.

They ride in absolute silence until they hit Figure 8, and JJ gives as precise directions as he can, even as the streets lose their names and the road gets way rougher. He sits as far forward as he possibly can, keeping his head and back off the seat - it was already not JJ’s favorite thing ever to be alone in a moving car with a pissed-off adult male, but everything after eating oysters with Kie had not been his favorite part of the day.

When they pull up to JJ’s house, it’s lit up like the 4th of July, though his dad’s truck is the only visible car. That is, less than ideal, so JJ pops the door as quickly as he can, and jumps down to the ground. Mr. Carreira heftes his phone, and says, “I’m just going to look up, what we need…” and JJ is done with him. He’s an adult - he can use his adult-fucking phone to figure out directions back. JJ has to go deal with the 4th of July apparently happening inside his house.

*****

He steps silently up the porch steps - the door is flung open, and it will be helpful to have the element of surprise - to give him two seconds to see what is waiting for him. Springsteen is blaring out of their shitty speakers, and his dad is shoving engine parts across the giant work table in their living room. He looks wired as fuck, and is muttering under his breath, talking angry nonsense to himself. This is… not a good scene. If JJ had any sense, he’d turn on his heel and sneak back down the porch step. He could sleep in the truck or on the dock if it came to it. But the shitty floor betrays him and groans fit to wake the dead, and his dad spins and snatches at his hair all in one motion, reeling him in. His teeth are bared in a rictus grin, and he shoves his face in close to JJ’s - breath reeking of cigarettes and tuna fish.

“I been looking for you for’n better part of a day, boy,” he slurs, spittle flecking from the corners of his mouth. “But you been gone, and so’s that 40 bucks I got hauling lumber on T’sday.” He yanks JJ over to the work table and shoves him down onto his stomach, one hand already going for his belt. “S’ comin’ out of your hide.”

JJ hunches his shoulders and pushes his chest back, trying to keep his torso clear of the metal parts on the table, but he drops back down when he feels his dad’s hand yank at the ties of his board shorts. “No, no, dad,” he begs, trying to push away. “They’re trunks, I don’t, don’t have boxers on, don’t-“

His shorts hit the floor at his feet, and he can fucking feel his father’s smirk. “S’your damn fault for going commando on a day when you decide to fucking steal from me, ain’t it, boy?” He punctuates that fact of life with a slap to JJ’s ass, and JJ feels his entire body freeze in horror. He hated it, fucking hated it, when his dad hit him with bare skin like that. He’d take a belt whipping a dozen times over than feel skin - it’s a crawling, sick feeling and it disgusts him down to his bones.

The belt suddenly whooshes over his head, and by god, is he grateful. He relaxes his ass and his legs as best he can, because tensing up makes it hurt worse and tries to turtle himself down into the warmest, safest space he can imagine, when-

“JJ! What the fuck?!”

Startled, his father lets go and spins to the still-open front door; Mike Carreira has stopped just inside their house, his phone held out in front of him like a weapon.

JJ can turn his head enough to see Kie’s dad take in their filthy kitchen with two busted cabinet doors, the pile of empty pill bottles stacked on the countertop like where somebody normal would keep pictures of their kids, and most damning of all, JJ bare-assed and bent over a table, about to take a beating from a strung-out tweaker.

Everyone is at a loss for words, but Mr. Carreira goes first. “JJ, I was just, uh, looking up, the best…” he lifts his phone, and of fucking course, he was researching lice shampoos and shit, as if JJ wasn’t just going to buzz his head and cover the rest of the hair in mayonnaise, which was both effective and didn’t cost $60 fucking dollars. 

JJ can see the exact second when Mr. Carreira realizes that it probably would not be helpful to introduce that topic of conversation at this precise moment, sees him swallow down and carefully close his lips over it.

He squares his shoulders and steps farther into their house, holding out a hand towards JJ’s dad, as if trying to placate a rabid dog.

“Mr. Maybank,” he says, “I own the Wreck, down on the Cut, and your boy was actually down there today, helping out with inventory and the like. He did a great job, and I just, realized I hadn’t paid him yet.” Mr. Carreira does not mention Kie or why JJ would suddenly be working at the Wreck, and JJ gives him an A fucking plus for that act of judgment.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Mr. Carreira pull out his wallet, and slide two hundred dollar bills from the middle pocket. He deliberately holds the money away from his father’s body, towards the hand holding the belt, so that his father has to put it down to take the money. Miracle of miracles, he actually slides the fucking thing back through his belt loops, and JJ feels like he can take a full breath since he crossed the porch.

His father takes the money, laughing to himself like a toddler, and just, steps away from JJ, as if he wasn’t there, already rooting in the kitchen for his shit phone.

JJ’s not stupid - this was a rescue, it was a reprieve, it was a distraction, but it also was a transaction, a fucking unexpected sale that was, money-wise, ultimately meaningless to Mr. Carreira, and worth a whole fucking lot more to JJ. As much as he really fucking wishes he wasn’t half-naked, and as much as he knows he should pull himself up off the table and thank Mr. Carreira, he’d have to bend down and pull up his board shorts to do that, and he just…doesn’t want to do that. Doesn’t want to have to acknowledge that this happened quite this way.

So, instead, he turns his head into the table and presses his forehead down, and mutters, “thanks.”

Mr. Carreira makes an aborted movement above him, as if he wanted to put his hand on JJ’s shoulder, but then remembered about the _crawling_ and takes a step towards the door.

“Please, don’t tell Kie,” JJ grits out, and he hears Mr. Carreira inhale sharply.

“No, JJ,” he says, “I, I won’t tell her.” He takes another step back. “You, going to be ok, kid? Can I call someone, maybe, for you to stay with…”

‘Cause he sure as shit wasn’t going to be invited to Kie’s Kook mansion with a million pieces of furniture to infect with his _crawling_ , even if Kie’s dad had to just stop his own dad from beating him.

“I’m good here, Mike,” JJ spits out, and Mr. Carreira makes a sound in the back of his throat.

“Alright, kid,” he says, and walks out the front door. Doesn’t even attempt to close it behind him.

JJ relaxes into the curve of the table, letting himself rest there for just one more minute. He can feel the shadows from the deepening night just at the edge of the porch stretching and slithering inside the house. _Crawling_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers/content warning: JJ's father (disgustingly abusive, both in cannon in the show, and in my little sandbox) yanks JJ's shorts down to give him a whipping with his belt - because JJ is wearing swim trunks, he is exposed from the waist down. While JJ is supremely uncomfortable about this, his father aggressively does not care. I am not writing any element of sexual abuse in this story between JJ and his father, nor do I ever intend to. (And if I did, I absolutely would have tagged for it). Merely a despicable manifestation of the horrendous physical abuse/aggressive neglect this poor little lamb has apparently suffered (with zero interference from apparently ANY adult) his whole life. 
> 
> I'm afraid there is no "comfort" in this chapter, but I actually do have something much nicer planned for the next one. 
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys - love to hear what you think.


	11. Paying the Piper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If only Big John had gotten John B. boxing lessons instead of teaching him about antique coins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe I said in the last chapter that I had something fluffier planned - v. much did not pan out.

Even though the Dean of Discipline’s office door was closed, JJ could still hear her call Big John and tell him to come collect John B. from school, immediately, as he’d been suspended for fighting. He could also hear her dial what was presumably his dad’s phone about ten times after she hung up with Big John; he could hear his dad fail to pick up each time. 

Normally, his dad’s total failure to respond to a telephone call from the middle school his son attended might raise some red flags with DCF, which was a problem of its own, but today, today it wasn’t such a bad thing that a whole bunch of people had checked “child neglect” on forms that had his name on the top over the years. He was really not looking forward to his dad learning _who_ he and John B. had fought. 

See, there’s certain kids at East Coast Middle School that you just generally shouldn’t hit. Jax Compton, whose dad ran the salvage yard that supplied most of JJ’s dad’s legitimate income, was one of those kids. Guess whose blood was currently decorating JJ’s knuckles. 

He stretched, uncurling his body from its slouch on the crackly plastic seats outside the Dean’s office, and felt John B. make an answering stretch from the seat next to him. 

“Sorry, bud,” John B. whispered, making a face as the split of his lip pulled when he spoke. “Didn’t mean for you to get fucking dragged into it.” 

*******

And that wasn’t it - nobody dragged JJ anywhere. At lunch Jax had made a crack about JJ’s dad, which was both accurate and in no way something to start a fight over, but John B. of course had a whole _thing_ about fathers and defending their honor against anyone who might call them mildly absentee or eccentric and fucking sailed right in, fists raised. JJ, whose father was in fact the tweaker that Jax had called him, and whose father would in fact whip his ass if he hit Jeff Compton’s kid, very much did not. 

John B. caught Jax in the head with a right jab, but since Big John was way more into antique coins and way less into boxing lessons, he wasn’t at all ready for Jax to step in under his guard and hit him in the throat. John B. went down to his hands and knees, visibly gasping for air, and Jax swung his foot back, ready to haul off and kick him in the stomach. 

That just…wasn’t going to happen. JJ had been kicked in the stomach and ribs while he was on his hands and knees, and he’d been kicked in the kidneys when he curled up in a ball, trying to protect his belly. He knew, fucking intimately, how utterly fucking humiliating it felt to be at someone’s mercy as they loomed over you; how fucking low and repulsive it felt to grind your face into a dirty floor to try to lessen the target you made. 

So, JJ swiped a plastic lunch tray from a nearby table and whacked Jax fully across the back - when Jax turned, stunned and shaky, JJ grinned at him and punched him in the mouth. Jax tripped back over John B. and hit the ground himself. Fight over. 

*******

“Hey, Bird,” Big John said, pulling his sunglasses off his face as he stepped into the dimness of the office. John B. straightened up immediately, body already curling towards his father in a clear expectation of comfort. As always, it was both fucking delicious and stomach-curdling to watch Big John immediately give it; he curled his hands around John B.’s curly head and drew him against his chest, letting him tuck in close. 

“Seems like you boys’ve had yourselves a day,” he said, looking over John B.’s head at JJ. 

JJ shrugged. The day certainly wasn’t over, and was certainly only going to get significantly worse. 

Big John stepped back from John B., but kept his hand curled over the back of John B.’s neck. “Tell me, Bird, did the kid have it coming?” 

Of course, John B. couldn’t contain himself. “He did, Dad! He so did! He called JJ’s dad a tweaker, and then he sucker punched me in the _throat_ , and then JJ knocked him down with one punch. JJ shouldn’t even be in trouble, Dad! He was defending me!” 

“That the way of it, JJ?” 

As usual, John B. made a stupid, nasty thing sound better than it actually worse, but it wasn’t worth getting into the ways he’d elided some of the more damning details. And hey, if Big John was happy with him for protecting his son, that would be a solid one adult man who was happy with him and the outcome of the fight. So, with nothing of his own to add, he just shrugged again. 

Suddenly, the Dean’s door swung open, and her voice carried out into the main office area. 

“Oh, Mr. Rutledge, thank you. Please, come in. I still haven’t managed to get ahold of Mr. Maybank…” 

And then Big John was moving, brushing past John B. and into the office, already smiling and holding out his hand for a handshake. 

“Thanks for the call, Dean Winters, and let me just say, right off the bat, I know JJ’s daddy was out on the water all afternoon, and probably doesn’t have any reception. But we’ve known JJ and his family for years now and - 

The door swung closed behind him with a harsh click, suddenly muffling whatever bullshit he was spinning about the close interpersonal relations between the Maybanks and the Rutledges. 

********

Big John worked his magic, like always, and even though JJ’s dad still hadn’t responded to the Dean’s messages, sprang them both from Middle School jail. 

He took them for hot dogs at Kelly’s Dinner since they’d had their lunch interrupted by “fisticuffs” and then took JJ for “I’m proud of you” ice cream and John B. for “good job not hurting yourself worse when you fell over and needed your friend to defend you, you damsel in distress” ice cream. JJ got chocolate chip cookie dough in a cone that was the size of his face, and distracted himself from the fact that Big John turned the van from the Dairy Queen to Route 202 and JJ’s house by eating it as neatly and carefully as he could. 

“Gonna have to face the music, sometime, Bird,” he replied quietly, when John B., in a rictus of agony, demanded to know why they weren’t just taking JJ home with them. 

He could hear John B. squawking in outrage in the front seat, but that just wasn’t important at the moment. As much as he wished, and he fucking _wished_ , that Big John would turn the van right the fuck around, JJ had hit Jax Compton in full knowledge of what was coming to him should he make contact with his precious Compton Salvage Yard face. He’d done it not because Jax had insulted his father - far fucking from it. He’d done it because his best friend was on all fours in front of him, hurting from a punch that he never should have taken, trying to defend a man that didn’t deserve it. And John B. had only done it because _he_ had a father who curled him into his chest whenever he wanted to be held, and who called him a “damsel in distress” but not in a way that was meant to hurt him. John B. had done it because he thought, deep down, that all fathers were like his dad. JJ, who knew that wasn’t true, had hit Jax Compton anyway. So, he had no choice but to take what was coming to him. 

*******

The van bounced to a stop in the hard-packed dirt of their front yard, Big John braking sharply when they rounded the corner and saw JJ’s dad, sitting in the front yard. He’d dragged one of their work tables into a shady spot, and had what looked like a carburetor spread out into its component parts on the table in front of him. The rest of the table was clear, except for two things: a couple feet of coiled orange electrical cord, and a three-foot long willow switch. 

JJ could feel his blood freeze in his veins - like his heart just simply stopped pumping. He could feel his body go through the motions of sliding open the van door and crawling out after John B., but it was like he was watching his body do it from ten feet above the whole scene. 

This was, supremely, supremely shitty. Almost a hundred percent of the time, if JJ was getting an ass-whipping it was from a belt. His dad owned two and neither was any appreciably better than the other. Almost one hundred percent of the time, the belt came off, JJ got hauled over his dad’s leg or pushed onto a table, the belt snapped and bit at him five to seven times (with some rounding up, depending on whether his dad was drunk or sliding) and then it was over. Dad wouldn't do it again for another couple of weeks (again, with some rounding down, depending on whether he was on a really bad binge). At most, he got some bruises and hot red stripes on his ass and thighs, which made sitting down a real bitch but otherwise, could be tuned out. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t the worst and JJ knows that Dad and the Maybank uncles had it way fucking worse from their own father. He’s tough - he can take it. 

He’d been whipped with the electrical cord precisely twice, and had taken a switch whipping only once. All three occasions had been hard and mean, deliberate punishments for serious transgressions. He’d bled, afterwards, from welts that split the thin skin of his backside and thighs, and doing anything more than sleeping on his stomach had been agony. It had taken weeks to heal up, and during that time, his dad had constantly shoved him ass-first against any wall or doorway he could reach, putting pressure on the wounds and smirking down at him. 

This was going to fucking suck. 

He couldn’t bring himself to walk in front of the Rutledges as they went to greet his father, who smiled up at them, but deliberately didn’t catch JJ’s eyes. 

“Hey, lookit here! It’s Big and Little Johnny Rutledges, right here in my own front yard!” 

He stood up from the table, and JJ could see from his posture that he wasn’t sober, but he wasn’t drunk - and even with the cord and the switched laid out for his choice in front of him, he let himself hope, for one second, that maybe Jeff Compton hadn’t gotten ahold of his dad. 

That hope was dashed when his dad finally turned to acknowledge him. “Good thing you’ve got going with the marina, Johnny - you don’t need to get salvage work when you can take it.”

His dad spat, a wad of phlegm that audibly spattered as it hit the dirt at JJ’s feet. 

“You’re luckier, ’n me - me, I been “instructed” that I won’t be needed for any future work at Compton's. Permanently.” 

His dad lifted his head, and stared directly into JJ’s eyes - JJ didn’t know what was reflected back, but every hair on the back of his neck was lifted, and it felt like his teeth were going to chatter out of his head

“Now, that’s a real fucking problem for me, boy.” He tapped the work table at his side, directly in between the cord and the switch. 

“Get your worthless little ass over here, and put your hands flat on this fucking table. Now.” 

JJ moved, almost stumbling to obey the order. This was code fucking red, nuclear reactor meltdown bad. He could feel his hands shaking as he placed them flat on the table, his shoulders curling in and down. 

Just as JJ moved, Big John moved as well - he tossed the keys to John B., and said, “John Booker, go and get in the van, right now. Lock the doors, and do not open them until I say - you hear me?” John B - shockingly - turned and ran for the van. 

And then, Big John was somehow in between his dad and JJ, nearly knocking JJ away from the table with the bulk of his body. 

“Listen, Maybank, I’m not going to fucking stand here and watch you beat this boy,” Big John snarled, and JJ could feel the growl in his own chest. 

He’d stepped in to defend one Rutledge today, and now Rutledge Senior was stepping in for him - but JJ knew that it wasn’t going to have the same happy ending. 

“Johnny, I’m fixin’ to whip that little piece of shit there til he cries or pisses hisself. I’m gonna whip him til he bleeds, and then I’m gonna leave him here in the dirt til he manages to drag his raggedy ass into the house.” He reached around Big John, and slammed JJ’s torso flat to the work table, dragging his face over the coiled electrical cord. 

“So, you can stand there or not but either way, I don’t think this is something you want your boy to see, is it?” 

Big John stepped away from JJ’s dad, moving back into JJ’s side, almost accidentally. JJ could feel Big John shaking - could feel how furious he was. This was not something JJ wanted John B. to see either - he desperately, desperately wanted the Rutledges to get into their van and drive away before his dad kicked his legs apart and started in on him with the cord. 

“And if you even think about tryn’ stop me, I’ll knock you on your fat ass and break your fucking nose and then I’ll whip him when you’re lyin’ there in the dirt, fucking helpless.” 

JJ could feel Big John tense, pressed against him, as if he might be considering it - might be considering throwing a punch at his dad. But Big John was a fucking _academic_ and his dad had grown up making extra money in bare-knuckle fights against inbred rednecks flying on meth. There was no question who would come out on top, and at the end of the day, JJ was going to get his ass flayed, whether Big John walked away with or without a concussion. And anyway, this was always how it was going to end; JJ had broken an inviolate rule, and there were going to be bloody fucking consequences. One bloody mouth should not equal out to firing and weeks of walking around with welts and bruises, but that was his dad’s math, and it was simply not up for debate. That’s why he didn’t hit Jax Compton when he called his dad a tweaker, but he did hit him for John B. and the man who raised him to think all fathers were like his dad. JJ knew that wasn’t the case. 

Big John stepped back, out of their little sordid family tableau, and JJ could hear him sigh gustily. JJ felt a big hand press suddenly on the top of his head, ruffling his hair, and then Big John was gone, footsteps receding to the car. Faintly, he could hear John B. shrieking at his father when Big John wrenched the door open, pleading with him to go back and save JJ, but that bit of sensory information wasn’t important at the moment. He could only concentrate on the rough wood under his cheek, how his breaths sounded loud and fast in his own ears. His head skidded six inches sideways when his dad yanked the electrical cord out from under his face, and it slithered like a snake as it unrolled in his hand. 

“Hope it was worth it, boy,” he said, pulling JJ’s shirt up til it was bunched up around his throat, strangling him. 

“It was,” JJ spat. Because, it fucking _was_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed - love to hear what you think!


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